A Book of the Seasons: November 21 (sudden illumination, Fair Haven Pond, scarlet oak leaves, first ice, little dippers, the mystery of things and theanthropic principle)

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 21

November 21, 2016

I see my future –

the world suddenly flooded

with a serene light.

November 21, 1850

These forms and colors

so adapted to my eye

cannot be improved.

We are made to love

pond and meadow as the wind

to ripple water.

November 21, 1850

See from Clamshell apparently two little dippers, one up-stream, the other down, swimming and diving in the perfectly smooth river this still, overcast day. November 21, 1858.   

See small water-bugs in Nut Meadow Brook in one place. Probably they were not to be found in the late cold weather.. November 21, 1858 

I am surprised this afternoon to find the river skimmed over in some places, and Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over, though commonly there is scarcely any ice to be observed along the shores. November 21, 1852

I see Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. November 21, 1850

I do not see how it could be improved. November 21, 1850

Yet I do not see what these things can be. November 21, 1850

I begin to see such an object when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or appreciate it before, but I get no further than this. November 21, 1850

How adapted these forms and colors to my eye! November 21, 1850

A meadow and an island! November 21, 1850

What are these things? November 21, 1850

Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved!      November 21, 1850

I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water. November 21, 1850

Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but [the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one] immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction.  November 21, 1857

The mountains are giants which tower above the rain, as we above the dew in the grass; it only wets their feet. November 21, 1853

Is not the dew but a humbler, gentler rain, the nightly rain, above which we raise our heads and unobstructedly behold the stars? November 21, 1853

Probably the bulk of the scarlet oak leaves are fallen. November 21, 1858

I find very handsome ones strewn over the floor of Potter’s maple swamp. They are brown above, but still purple beneath. November 21, 1858

These are so deeply cut and the middle and lobes of the leaf so narrow that they look like the remnant of leafy stuff out of which leaves have been cut, or like scrap-tin. November 21, 1858

The lobes are remarkably sharp pointed and armed with long bristles. Yes, they lie one above another like masses of scrap-tin. November 21, 1858

For a month past the grass under the pines has been covered with a new carpet of pine leaves. It is remarkable that the old leaves turn and fall in so short a time. November 21, 1850

Seeing the sun falling on a distant white pinewood with mingled gray and green, in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. November 21, 1850

It is like looking into dreamland. November 21, 1850

It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. November 21, 1850

It is one of the avenues to my future. November 21, 1850

Coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. November 21, 1850

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. November 21, 1850

*****

See J J Audubon ("The bufflehead, being known in different districts by the names of Spirit Duck, Butter-box, Marrionette, Dipper, and Die-dipper, generally returns from the far north, where it is said to breed, about the beginning of September.")

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Little Dipper

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Fair Haven Pond

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Fall 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man 

(the anthropic principle)

and

We are made to love

*****

November 21, 2018

Walden ("Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.")

*****

February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described.")

March 22, 1856 ("I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad")

March 27, 1858 ("At length I detect two little dippers, as I have called them, though I am not sure that I have ever seen the male before. They are male and female close together, the common size of what I have called the little dipper.")

May, 1850 ("In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.")

April 18, 1852 ("Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life? ")

June 5, 1853 ("The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla")

July 16, 1851 ("To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes!  . . .There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.”)

August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree.")

August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”)

August 23, 1852 ("What are these rivers and hills, these hieroglyphics?")

August 23, 1852 ("I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and I feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience.")

September 4, 1854 ("Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her.")

September 9, 1854 ("Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures. ")

September 8, 1859 ("See the black head and neck of a little dipper in midstream, a few rods before my boat. It disappears, and though I search carefully, I cannot detect it again.")
September 9, 1858 ("At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water.")
September 27, 1860 ("Looking up i see a little dipper in the middle of the river. ")
September 30, 1858 ("I see undoubtedly the little dipper by the edge of the pads this afternoon . . . It is much smaller than I have seen this season, and is hard to detect even within four or five rods. It warily dives and comes up a rod or two further off amid the pads, scarcely disturbing the surface")

October 11, 1852 ("I could detect the progress of a water-bug over the smooth surface in almost any part of the pond, for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicous ripple bounded by two diverging lines")

October 15, 1858 ("If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones, uniformly deep, dark scarlet, will be the scarlet oaks")

October 17, 1855 ("I see behind (or rather in front of) me as I row home a little dipper appear in mid-river, as if I had passed right over him. It dives while I look, and I do not see it come up anywhere.")
October 21, 1855 ("The scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! ")
October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak . . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. ")

October 26, 1858 ("The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later")
October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks.")

October 30, 1858 ("The scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November")  

November 1, 1858 ("If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed.")
November 2, 1858 ("I see that the scarlet oaks are more generally bright than on the 22d . .. . Methinks they are as bright, even this dark day, as I ever saw them.  . . . so widely and equally dispersed throughout the forest; . . . lasting into November. . . this deep, dark scarlet and red, the intensest of colors, the ripest fruit of the year")
November 3, 1853 ("A small gyrinus in Nut Meadow Brook.")

November 4, 1858 ("The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else")
November 5, 1858 ("Little dippers were seen yesterday")
November 7, 1855 ("Gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”)
November 10, 1858 ("The brilliancy of the scarlet oak being generally dulled, the season of brilliant leaves may be considered over, — say about the 10th; and now a new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods, etc.")

November 11, 1858 ("The scarlet oak leaf! What a graceful and pleasing outline! a combination of graceful curves and angles. . . . If I were a drawing master, I would set my pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and gracefully. ")
November 11, 1852 ("Did Harris call the water-bug Gyrinus to-day?") 
November 15, 1853 ("Were those insects on the surface after the moon rose skaters or water-bugs?")
November 15, 1857 ("The water of the brook beyond Hubbard’s Grove. . .is clear, cold, and deserted of life. There are no water-bugs nor skaters on it. . . . There is but little insect-life abroad now. . . . This cold blast has swept the water-bugs from the pools")

 November 18, 1858  (Am surprised to see Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over during the last four days. It will probably open again"")

November 20, 1853 ("What enhances my interest in dew is the fact that it is so distinct from rain, formed most abundantly after bright, star lit nights, a product especially of the clear, serene air.")
November 20, 1853 ("That nightly rain called dew, which gathers and falls in so low a stratum that our heads tower above it like mountains in an ordinary shower.")

 November 20, 1858 ("As I returned over Conantum summit yesterday, just before sunset, and was admiring the various rich browns of the shrub oak plain across the river, which seemed to me more wholesome and remarkable, as more permanent, than their late brilliant colors, I was surprised to see a broad halo travelling with me and always opposite the sun to me, at least a quarter of a mile off and some three rods wide, on the shrub oaks")

Two little dippers

one up-stream, the other down –

still overcast day.

November 21, 1858

November 22, 1860 ("Still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him. Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain- top through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon. ")

November 23, 1852  ("I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over.")

November 23, 1850 ("I am much more surprised to find a pond in the woods, containing an acre or more, quite frozen over so that I walk across it. It is in a cold corner, where a pine wood excludes the sun. In the larger ponds and the river, of course, there is no ice yet. I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom")
November 23, 1850 ("We find Heywood's Pond frozen five inches thick." )
November 24, 1858 ("Fair Haven Pond is closed still. ")
November 26, 1855 ("The ice next the shore bears me and my boat")

November 27, 1857 (". Mr. Wesson says . . . that the little dipper is not a coot, - but he appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them. Says the little dipper has a bill like a hen, and will not dive at the flash so as to escape, as he has proved")
November 30, 1855 ("River skimmed over behind Dodd’s and elsewhere. Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day")

November 30, 1858 ("The river may be said to have frozen generally last night")

December 9, 1856 ("The white oak leaves are a very pale brown, but the scarlet oaks are quite red now in the sun. Near at hand they are conspicuously ruddy in any light, the scarlet oaks. . . .One species does not stand by itself, but they are dispersed and intimately mingled .  . .The bright colors of autumn are transient; these browns are permanent. These are not so much withered leaves, for they have a wintry life in them still, and the tanned or bronzed color of assured health.")
December 21, 1856 ("The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides")
December 26, 1853 ("Saw in [Walden] a small diver, probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper, or what-not, ... It had a black head, a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black back, and apparently no tail.It dove and swam a few rods under water, and, when on the surface, kept turning round and round warily and nodding its head the while.")

December 5, 1856 ("I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the very nick of time, too")

December 11, 1855 ("I am struck by the perfect confidence and success of nature")

December 26, 1857(" Humphrey Buttrick tells me that he has shot little dippers. He also saw the bird which Melvin shot last summer (a coot), but he never saw one of them before. The little dipper must, therefore, be different from a coot. Is it not a grebe? ")
December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road.")

January 12, 1855 (" It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls. Ah, bless the Lord, O my soul! bless him for wildness, for crows that will not alight within gunshot! and bless him for hens, too, that croak and cackle in the yard! ")
January 24, 1858 ("At Nut Meadow Brook the small-sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer.")

January 26, 1852 ("Let us preserve, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature.")

November 21, 2014

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 20 <<<<<<<<  November 21 >>>>>>>> November 22

.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 21.

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT21NOV