The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.

November 16. 

9 a. m. — Sail up river to Lee's Bridge. 

Colder weather and very windy, but still no snow. A very little ice along the edges of the river, which does not all melt before night. 

Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are quite conspicuous half a mile distant, and are of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape. 

I still see the drowned white lily pads showing their red sides. 

On the meadow side the water is very much soiled by the dashing of the waves. 

I see one duck. 

The pines on shore look very cold, reflecting a silvery light. 

The waves run high, with white caps, and communicate a pleasant motion to the boat. 

At Lee's Cliff the Cerastium viscosum. 

We sailed up Well Meadow Brook. The water is singularly grayey, clear and cold. The bottom of the brook showing great nuphar roots, like its ribs, with some budding leaves. 

Returning, landed at Holden's Spruce Swamp. 

The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.

The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 16, 1852

Muskrat-houses completed.See  October 16, 1859 (“When I get to Willow Bay I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores. To me this is an important and suggestive sight, as, perchance, in some countries new haystacks in the yards; as to the Esquimaux the erection of winter houses.”); November 11, 1855 ("The bricks of which the muskrat builds his house are little masses or wads of the dead weedy rubbish on the muddy bottom, which it probably takes up with its mouth. It consists of various kinds of weeds, now agglutinated together by the slime and dried confervae threads, utricularia, hornwort, etc., — a streaming, tuft-like wad. The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off.”)

The pines on shore look very cold, reflecting a silvery light. See . November 11, 1851 (“There is a cold, silvery light on the white pines as I go through J.P. Brown's field near Jenny Dugan's. Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light”) December 3, 1856 (“The silvery needles of the pine straining the light.")

The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf. See November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The swamp-pink and blueberry buds attract. See November 5, 1855 ("Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.”); November 6, 1853 (“The remarkable roundish, plump red buds of the high blueberry.”);  December 1, 1852 (“At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,- the large bright yellowish and reddish buds of the swamp-pink, the already downy ones of the Populus tremuloides and the willows, the red ones of the blueberry”)