A Book of the Seasons: November 11 ( bracing cold, exhilarating sunlight, wild apples, wild geese and sheltered places )

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

November 11. 

Bracing cold morning

exhilarating sunlight

russet frosty fields

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. I wear mittens now.

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood.

November 11, 1853

Smooth shallow water

in the shelter of the wood

awaiting the ice

November 11, 1858

How curves and angles

combine in pleasing outline --

the scarlet oak leaf!

November 11, 1858

This is the month of nuts and nutty thoughts, — that November whose name sounds so bleak and cheerless. Perhaps its harvest of thought is worth more than all the other crops of the year. Men are more serious now. November11, 1858

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a fish in the milk. November 11, 1850

Now is the time for wild apples. November 11, 1850

Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat,  --  apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides. November 11, 1850

A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters. November 11, 1851

A cold day. , . . Coming home I have cold fingers, and must row to get warm. November 11, 1858 

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. I wear mittens now. November11, 1853.

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. November 11, 1853

Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light. The lately dark woods are open and light; the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring. November 11, 1851

Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon. November 11, 1858

The brilliancy of the autumn is wonderful, this flashing brilliancy, as if the atmosphere were phosphoric. The fall of the year is over. November 11, 1851

Now seek sunny and sheltered places as in early spring, the south side the island, for example. Certain localities are thus distinguished. And they retain this peculiarity permanently, unless it depends on a wood which may be cut. Thousands of years hence this may still be the warmest and sunniest spot in the spring and fall. November11, 1858

I am glad of the shelter of the thick pine wood on the Marlborough road, on the plain. The wind roars over the pines, and at intervals there is a certain resounding woodiness in the tone. How the wind roars among the shrouds of the wood! . . .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. The lately dark woods are open and light; the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring. November 11, 1851 

Here, in the sun in the shelter of the wood, the smooth shallow water, with the stubble standing in it, is waiting for ice. . . .The sight of such water now reminds me of ice as much as water. November11, 1858

As long as the sun is out, it is warm and pleasant. The water is smooth. I see the reflections. November 11, 1855

Going by the willow-row above railroad, scare up a small duck, —perhaps teal, —and, in the withered grass at Nut Meadow Brook, two black ducks, which rise black between me and the sun, but, when they have circled round to the east, show some silvery sheen on the under side of their wings.  November 11, 1858

See only a very few small water-bugs in the brook, but no large ones nor skaters. November11, 1858

Snow-fleas are skipping on the surface of the water at the edge, and spiders running about. November 11, 1858

Did Harris call the water-bug Gyrinus to-day? November 11, 1852

The scarlet oak leaf! What a graceful and pleasing outline! a combination of graceful curves and angles. November 11, 1858

Minott heard geese go over night before last, about 8 P. M. November 11, 1854

Scare up a bird which at first ran in the grass, then flew, —a snipe. November 11, 1858

I am surprised to see quite a number of painted tortoises out on logs and stones and to hear the wood tortoise rustling down the bank November 11, 1855

The building of [muskrat] cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off . . . Thither they resort with their clam to open and eat it. November 11, 1856

The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all. November 11, 1853

A flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds? November 11, 1859

In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. November 11, 1858

 Gathered to-day the autumnal dandelion. November 11, 1850

At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves and, half an inch below, a white line of saw dust, eight inches above the present surface, on the upright side of a rock, both mathematically level.  November 11, 1855

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you hear a seal bark in the bedroom. November 11, 2021 

That blue mountain in the horizon is certainly the most heavenly, the most elysian, which we have not climbed, on which we have not camped for a night. November 11, 1851

November 11, 2017

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Snow-flea

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: the Snipe

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November Moods

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

November 11, 2018

March 31, 1853 (" It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.”)

August 19, 1852 (“Here is a recess apparently never frequented. Thus this rill flowed here a thousand years ago, and with exactly these environments. ”)

October 25, 1858 (“Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light. ”

October 27, 1855 (“To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise, the frosty weather nips your fingers (in November), the wind rattles the bare boughs and rustles the leaves, and the jay is heard screaming around. Some of those apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind.”)

October 27, 1855 (“I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.“)

October 31, 1851 ("The wild apples are now getting palatable . . . The saunterer's apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house.")

November 1, 1853 (" As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")

November 1, 1857 ("I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light")
November 1, 1851 ("It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs")
November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air.")

November 2, 1857 ("Wild apples have lost some of their brilliancy now and are chiefly fallen.")
November 3, 1857 ("I see against the sunlight. . ., a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear")
November 4, 1855 ("It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.“)

This raw gusty day

the jays with their scream at home 

in the scenery

November 4, 1851

November 5, 1853 ("What exactly are they for? . . . so that they may not have to swim so far as the flood would require in order to eat their clams[?]")

The notes of the jays

attracted by the acorns --

the only sounds heard.

November 5, 1860

November 7, 1858 ("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 escaped their notice. . . . 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.")

November 7, 1855 ("Gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”)

November 8 , 1857 ("About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest")
November 10, 1858 ("Several jays busily gathering acorns on a scarlet oak.")

 

 

November 13,1855 ("I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.”)

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 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night.") 
November 13, 1858 (" It is the more glorious to live in Concord because the jay is so splendidly painted.")

November 14, 1855 ("Minott hears geese to-day.")
November 15, 1858 ("Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November.")

November 15, 1859 ("A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it. ")

The jay on alert

mimicking each woodland note.

What happened? Who's dead?

November 16, 1850

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 18, 1857 (“Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places.”)

November 18, 1857 ("Crows will often come flying much out of their way to caw at me")

November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day,”);
November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.”)

November 22, 1853 (“Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also.”)

November 23, 1853 ("At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, . . . This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th , i.e. within a week.")

November 23, 1850 ("The wild apples, though they are more mellow and edible, have for some time lost their beauty, as well as the leaves, and now too they are beginning to freeze. The apple season is well-nigh over. Such, however, as are frozen while sound are not unpleasant to eat when the spring sun thaws them")
November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering.”)
November 25, 1852 ("At Walden. — I hear at sundown what I mistake for the squawking of a hen. . . but it proved to be a flock of wild geese going south")

November 28, 1856 ("Sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches... remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon.")
November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A.M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least")
December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")
January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side")
January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars.")

November 11, 2013

 

A bright but cold day

one must next wear gloves --

hands' winter quarters.

November 11, 1851

 If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

November 10 <<<<<<<<<  November 11  >>>>>>>> November 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 11

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 © 2009-2022