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
Got my boat up this
Thanksgiving day afternoon –
one end frozen in.
In this oak wood hear
the faint note of a nuthatch
like a creaking limb.
I detect it much
nearer than I suspected –
its mate not far off.
November 26, 2012
I love to have the river
closed up for a season
and a pause put to my boating
to be obliged to get my boat in.
I shall launch it again in the spring
with so much more pleasure.
I love best to have each thing
in its season only
and enjoy doing without it
at all other times.
Bottom of boat covered with ice. The ice next the shore bears me and my boat. November 26, 1855
Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in. November 26, 1857
Minott's is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill. November 26, 1857
Not that its form is so incomparable, nor even its weather-stained color, but chiefly, I think, because of its snug and picturesque position on the hillside. November 26, 1857
It is there because somebody was independent or bold enough to carry out the happy thought of placing it high on the hillside. November 26, 1857
The spring comes earlier to that dooryard than to any, and summer lingers longest there. November 26, 1857
It is the locality, not the architecture, that takes us captive. November 26, 1857
In the oak wood counting the rings of a stump, I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off November 26, 1860
This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. November 26, 1860
Commonly they are steadily hopping about the trunks in search of insect food. Yet today the nuthatch picks out from a crevice in the bark of an oak trunk, where it was perpendicular, something white and pretty large. November 26, 1860
The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. November 26, 1859
When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. November 26, 1859
At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant. November 26, 1859
I see here today one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. November 26, 1859
It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. November 26, 1859
What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day? November 26, 1854
I see in the open field east of Trillium Wood a few pitch pines springing up, from seeds blown from the wood a dozen or fifteen rods off. November 26, 1860
These which are now mistaken for mosses in the grass may become lofty trees which will endure two hundred years, under which no vestige of this grass will be left. November 26, 1860
Thus from pasture this portion of the earth's surface becomes forest. November 26, 1860
Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in. November 26, 1857
Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual). November 26, 1858
Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. November 26, 1858
And what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. November 26, 1858
Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. November 26, 1858
And what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. November 26, 1858
In this mud I found two small frogs, one apparently a Rana palustris less than an inch long. November 26, 1858
Not that its form is so incomparable, nor even its weather-stained color, but chiefly, I think, because of its snug and picturesque position on the hillside. November 26, 1857
It is there because somebody was independent or bold enough to carry out the happy thought of placing it high on the hillside. November 26, 1857
The spring comes earlier to that dooryard than to any, and summer lingers longest there. November 26, 1857
It is the locality, not the architecture, that takes us captive. November 26, 1857
In the oak wood counting the rings of a stump, I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off November 26, 1860
This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. November 26, 1860
Commonly they are steadily hopping about the trunks in search of insect food. Yet today the nuthatch picks out from a crevice in the bark of an oak trunk, where it was perpendicular, something white and pretty large. November 26, 1860
The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. November 26, 1859
When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. November 26, 1859
At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant. November 26, 1859
I see here today one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. November 26, 1859
It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. November 26, 1859
What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day? November 26, 1854
I see in the open field east of Trillium Wood a few pitch pines springing up, from seeds blown from the wood a dozen or fifteen rods off. November 26, 1860
It would be mistaken for a single sprig of moss - that came from the seed this year. It is, as it were, a little green star with many rays, half an inch in diameter. November 26, 1860
These which are now mistaken for mosses in the grass may become lofty trees which will endure two hundred years, under which no vestige of this grass will be left. November 26, 1860
Thus from pasture this portion of the earth's surface becomes forest. November 26, 1860
No doubt several creatures, like otter and mink and foxes, know where to resort for their food at this season. This is now a perfect otter’s or mink’s preserve. November 26, 1858
Woods, both the primitive and those which are suffered to spring up in cultivated fields, preserve the mystery of nature. November 26, 1859
It is worth the while to have these thickets on various sides of the town, where the rabbit lurks and the jay builds its nest. November 26, 1859 
*****
November 26, 2017
It is worth the while to have these thickets on various sides of the town, where the rabbit lurks and the jay builds its nest. November 26, 1859
November 26, 2017
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November days
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
*****
Walking ("A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”)
April 27, 1854 ("That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse nearby is in harmony with it.")
May 1850 ("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.")May 12, 1857 ("It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.”).
December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow”
May 16, 1860 ("[brown creeper] flies across to another bough, or to the base of another tree, and traces that up, zigzag and prying into the crevices.”)
May 31, 1858 ("I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse.s ")
June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”)
August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”);
October 20, 1856 ("Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. “)
November 4, 1853 ("Hear a nuthatch.")
November 4, 1855 (“The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter”)
November 7, 1855 ("See a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights.”)
November 7, 1858 ("The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up.")
November 7, 1858 ("The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain. But just then I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter.")
November 16, 1860 (“In my two walks I saw only one squirrel and a chickadee. Not a hawk or a jay.”)
November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . . I hear the hooting of an owl . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound.")
November 18, 1855 (I am prepared to hear sharp, screaming notes rending the air, from the winter birds."")
November 19, 1857 ("In Stow's sprout-land west of railroad cut, I see where a mouse which has a hole under a stump has eaten out clean the insides of the little Prinos verticillatus berries. What pretty fruit for the mice, these bright prinos berries!")
November 22, 1860 ("...and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.”)
November 25, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse")
November 25, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse")
November 28, 1858 ("More small birds —tree sparrows and chickadees — than usual about the house.")
November 29, 1860 (“Get up my boat, 7 a. m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river.”)
November 30, 1855 (“Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day. ”
December 1, 1853 ("I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”)
December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear [the nuthatch] on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here * [but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59")
December 2, 1854 (“Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.”)
December 2, 1854 (“Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.”)
December 2, 1856 (“Got in my boat . . . It made me sweat to wheel it home through the snow”)
December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits.")
December 10, 1859 (“Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze.”)
December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day. . . .I hear rarely a bird except the chickadee, or perchance a jay or crow.")
December 13, 1852 ("I observed a mouse . . . reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath,. . .. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse")
December 13, 1852 (“I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden")December 27, 1853 (“ I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice")
January 22, 1852 ("I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. . . Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last?”)
January 29, 1853 ("I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden, three or four rods from the shore, its tail sticking out a hole. It had apparently run into this hole when full of water, as if on land, and been drowned and frozen.")
February 9, 1858 (“A distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.”) February 24, 1854 ("Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”)
November 26, 2017
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.
November 25 <<<<<<<< November 26. >>>>>>>> November 27
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 26
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
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