November 8
Mayweed and shepherd’s-purse.
10 A. M. — Our first snow, the wind southerly, the air chilly and moist; a very fine snow, looking like a mist toward the woods or horizon, which at 2 o’clock has not whitened the ground. The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess.
P. M. – To riverside as far down as near Peter’s, to look at the water-line before the snow covers it.
By Merrick’s pasture it is mainly a fine, still more or less green, thread-like weed or grass of the river bottom (?), sedges, utricularias (that coarse one especially, whose name I am not sure of, with tassels (?), yellow water ranunculus, potamogeton’s translucent leaves, a few flags and pontederia stems.
By Peter’s there was much of that coarse triangular cellular stem mentioned yesterday as sparganium (?). I would not have thought it so common.
There is not so much meadow grass or hay as I expected, for that has been raked and carried off.
The pads, too, have wasted away and the pontederias’ leaves, and the stems of the last for the most part still adhere to the bottom.
Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous, reminding me of arctic snowbirds by their size and form also.
The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.
November 8, 2023
Birds generally wear the russet dress of nature at this season. They have their fall no less than the plants; the bright tints depart from their foliage or feathers, and they flit past like withered leaves in rustling flocks.
The sparrow is a withered leaf.
The Stellaria media still blooms in Cheney’s garden, and the shepherd’s-purse looks even fresher. This must be near the end of the flower season.
Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song.
And the last striped squirrel, too, perchance, yesterday. They, then, do not go into winter quarters till the ground is covered with snow.
The partridges go off with a whir, and then sail a long way level and low through the woods with that impetus they have got, displaying their neat forms perfectly.
The yellow larch leaves still hold on, — later than those of any of our pines.
I noticed the other day a great tangled and netted mass of an old white pine root lying upon the surface, nearly a rod across and two feet or more high, too large even to be turned up for a fence.
It suggested that the roots of trees would be an interesting study. There are the small thickly interwoven roots of the swamp white oaks on the Assabet.
At evening the snow turned to rain, and the sugaring soon disappeared.
Our first snow. The children greet it with a shout. See November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”) See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow I have seen")
At evening the snow turned to rain, and the sugaring soon disappeared.
H.D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1853
And the last striped squirrel, too, perchance, yesterday. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel
Three larks rise from the sere grass on Minott’s Hill before me, the white of their outer tail-feathers very conspicuous. See October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring."); October 18, 1858 ("See larks, with their white tail-feathers, fluttering low over the meadows these days"); November 1, 1853 ("I see and hear a flock of larks in Wheeler's meadow on left of the Corner road, singing exactly as in spring and twittering also, but rather faintly or suppressedly."); See also June 30, 1851 ("The lark sings a note which belongs to a New England summer evening."); August 4, 1852 ("I must make a list of those birds which, like the lark and the robin, if they do not stay all the year, are heard to sing longest of those that migrate."); October 6, 1851 ("I hear a lark singing this morn (October 7th ), and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks and blackbirds are heard again now occasionally, seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell")
Birds too wear russet
and they flit past like withered
leaves in rustling flocks.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground
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-531108
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