November 30.
There was more light in
the water than in the sky
as we paddled home.
8 A. M. To river, to examine roots,
I rake up almost everywhere from the bottom of the river that very fresh and bright green ranunculus, the handsomely divided leaf.
I ascertain this morning that that white root with eyes and slaty-tinged fibres and sharp leaves rolled up, found gnawed off and floating about muskrat-houses, is the root of the great yellow lily. The leaf-stalk is yellow, while that of the white lily is a downy or mildewy blue black. The yellow lily root is, then, a principal item, it would seem, in their vegetable diet.
I find that those large triangular or rhomboidal or shell-shaped eyes or shoulders on this root are the bases of leaf-stalks which have rotted off, but toward the upper end of the root are still seen decaying. They are a sort of abutment on which the leaf-stalk rested, and the fine black dots on them are the bases of the fine threads or fibres of the leaf-stalk, which, in the still living leaf-stalk, are distinguished by their purple color.
These eyes, like the leaves, of course, are arranged spirally around the roots in parallel rows, in quincunx order, so that four make a diamond figure,
The slate-tinged fibres spring from the bare white intervals between the bases of the leaves, Closely packed between, and protected by the under leaf stalk, I find already the tender club-shaped yellow flower-bud a quarter of an inch in diameter, with a stem two inches long and wider than the bud.
I am surprised to find these roots, even within to the bases of the leaves about the buds, infested with white grubs nearly half an inch long and minute, threadlike red dish and speckled worms.
Also on the fibres are transparent elliptical chrysalids, the color of a snail-shell, containing insects apparently just ready to fly,
The white lily roots are more enveloped in down and fibre, a dark-blue or blackish down.
I raked up one dark-brown root somewhat like a white lily, except that it was smooth and the leaf-stalks were very slender and the leaf-buds minute. Perhaps it was the kalmiana lily.
I raked up one live clam in deep water, and could feel them like stones on the bottom.
All these leaves are lightly rolled up in the form of arrowheads, as thus best prepared to pierce whatever obstacles the mud or water may present.
There is a vast amount of decaying vegetable matter at the bottom of the river, and what I draw up on my rake emits a very offensive odor.
1 P. M. – Down river by boat and inland to the green house beyond Blood's.
A mild and summery afternoon with much russet light on the landscape.
I think it was a flock of low-warbling tree sparrows which I saw amid the weeds beyond the monument, though they looked larger,
I am attracted nowadays by the various withered grasses and sedges, of different shades of straw-color and of various more or less graceful forms.
That which I call fescue grass is quite interesting, gracefully bending to the zephyr, and many others are very perfect and pure.
Wool-grass is one of the largest and most conspicuous. I observe it rising thinly above the water in which it is reflected, two or three feet, and all its narrow rustling leaves stream southeasterly from the stems, though it is now quite calm, proving the prevalence of northwesterly winds.
An abundance of withered sedges and other coarse grasses, which in the summer you scarcely noticed, now cover the low grounds, -- the granary of the winter birds.
A very different end they serve from the flowers which decay so early.
Their rigid culms enable them to withstand the blasts of winter. Though divested of color, fairly bleached, they are not in the least decayed but seasoned and living like the heart-wood.
Now, first since spring, I take notice of the cladonia lichens, which the cool fall rains appear to have started.
The Callitriche verna is perfectly fresh and green, though frozen in, in the pools.
We are going across the Hunt and Mason pastures.
The twigs of young cedars with apparently staminate buds have even a strawberry-like fragrance, and what a heavenly blue have the berries! - a peculiar light blue, whose bloom rubs off, contrasting with the green or purplish-brown leaves.
I do not know so fine a pine grove as that of Mason's. The young second-growth white pines are peculiarly soft, thick, and bushy there. They branch directly at the ground and almost horizontally, for the most part four or five large stems springing from the ground together, as if they had been broken down by cattle originally. But the result is a very dark and dense, almost impenetrable, but peculiarly soft and beautiful grove, which any gentleman might covet on his estate.
We returned by the bridle-road across the pastures.
When I returned to town the other night by the Walden road through the meadows from Brister's Hill to the poorhouse, I fell to musing upon the origin of the meanders in the road; for when I looked straight before or behind me, my eye met the fences at a short distance, and it appeared that the road, instead of being built in a straight line across the meadows, as one might have expected, pursued a succession of curves like a cow-path. In fact, it was just such a meandering path as an eye of taste requires, and the landscape-gardener consciously aims to make, and the wonder is that a body of laborers left to themselves, without instruments or geometry, and perchance intending to make a straight road, — in short, that circumstances ordinarily, — will so commonly make just such a meandering road as the eye requires.
A man advances in his walk somewhat as a river does, meanderingly, and such, too, is the progress of the race.
The law that plants the rushes in waving lines along the edge of a pond, and that curves the pond shore itself, incessantly beats against the straight fences and highways of men and makes them conform to the line of beauty which is most agreeable to the eye at last.
But to return to the walk of the day.
Though there were some clouds in the west, there was a bright silver twilight before we reached our boat.
C. remarked it descending into the hollows immediately after sunset,
A red house could hardly be distinguished at a distance, but a white one appeared to reflect light on the landscape.
At first we saw no redness in the sky, but only some peculiar dark wisp-like clouds in the west, but on rising a hill I saw a few red stains like veins of red quartz on a ground of feldspar.
The river was perfectly smooth except the upwelling of its tide, and as we paddled home westward, the dusky yellowing sky was all reflected in it, together with the dun-colored clouds and the trees, and there was more light in the water than in the sky.
The reflections of the trees and bushes on the banks were wonderfully dark and distinct, for though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky. We were thus often enabled to steer clear of the overhanging bushes.
It was an evening for the muskrats to be abroad, and we saw one, which dove as he was swimming rapidly, turning over like a wheel.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1853
A flock of low-warbling tree sparrows. See December 3, 1853 ("Saw two tree sparrows on Monroe's larch by the waterside. Larger than chip-birds, with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to mention bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash. . . . uttering from time to time a faint, tinkling chip")
.I do not know so fine a pine grove as that of Mason's. See November 30, 1851 ("My eye wanders across the valley to the pine woods which fringe the opposite side, and in their aspect my eye finds something which addresses itself to my nature.. . .I experienced a transient gladness, at any rate, at something which I saw. I am sure that my eye rested with pleasure on the white pines, now reflecting a silvery light, the infinite stories of their boughs, tier above tier, a sort of basaltic structure, a crumbling precipice of pine horizontally stratified. Each pine is like a great green feather stuck in the ground. A myriad white pine boughs extend themselves horizontally, one above and behind another, each bearing its burden of silvery sunlight, ")
Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky. See November 2, 1857 ("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.")
