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
I hear a tree creak
sharply like a bird,
a phoebe.
A few small hemlocks
remind me of snows to come –
shelter for the birds.
My thought is a part
of the meaning of the world,
and hence I use a part
of the world as a symbol
to express my thought.
Must be out-of-doors enough
to get experience of wholesome reality,
as a ballast to thought and sentiment.
Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.
This life in the present.
Let a man have thought
what he will of Nature in the house,
she will still be novel outdoors.
I keep out of doors
for the sake of the
mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.
To Hubbard's Close.
I find no traces of the fringed gentian here,
so that in low meadows
I suspect it does not last very late.
The fertile catkins of the yellow birch
appear to be in the same state with those of the white,
and their scales are also shaped like birds,
but much larger.
The shad-bush buds
have expanded into small
leaflets already.
The winter is approaching.
The birds are almost all gone.
The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct,
prophetic of winter,
as I go amid the wild apples.
November 4, 1855
I have failed to find white pine seed this year,
though I began to look for it a month ago.
The cones were fallen and open.
Look the first of September.
I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting,
this cool evening.
Sitting with my back to a thick oak sprout
whose leaves still glow with life,
Walden lies an oblong square
endwise to, beneath me.
Its surface is slightly rippled,
and dusky prolonged reflections of trees
extend wholly across its length.
November 4, 1857
 |
Overlooking Walden Pond toward
Waschusett, from Pine Hill
April 28, 1906
Waschusett, from Pine Hill
April 28, 1906
But those grand and glorious mountains,
how impossible to remember daily
that they are there,
and to live accordingly!
They are meant to be
a perpetual reminder to us,
pointing out the way.
November 4, 1857
The true sportsman
can shoot you almost any of his game
from his windows.
It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun;
but the rest of the world never see it with the feathers on.
He will keep himself supplied
by firing up his chimney.
The geese fly exactly under his zenith,
and honk when they get there.
The fisherman, too, dreams of fish,
till he can almost catch them
in his sink-spout
We cannot see any thing
until we are possessed with the idea of it,
and then we can hardly see anything else.
.In my botanical rambles
I find that first the idea, or image,
of a plant occupies my thoughts,
though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality,
and for some weeks or months
I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously,
and at length I surely see it,
and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine.
This is the history of my finding
a score or more of rare plants which I could name.
I notice for the first time
that peculiar blueness of the river
agitated by the wind
and contrasting with the tawny fields –
a fall phenomenon.
White birch seed has but recently begun to fall.
I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare.
The birch sheds its seed
about the time winter birds
arrive from the north.
November 4, 2023
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay
*****
January 5, 1860("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. . . . He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”)
February 25, 1859 ("I am more than ever convinced . . . that there are very few persons who do see much of nature.")
March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. “)
March 29, 1853 (“It is not till we are completely lost, or turned around, --for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, --do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”);
March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.') April 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.”);
May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.")
June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”)
July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”)
July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”)
August 14, 1854(“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.")
August 14, 1854(“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.")
September 2, 1856; ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood,. . .”);
September 12, 1851("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day.")
September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day.")
September 9, 1858 (“A man sees only what concerns him.”)
October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen. “)
October 11, 1851( The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”)
October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winterish.”)
October 15, 1856 (“The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”)
Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”);
November 1, 1853 (I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood-lot last winter.)
November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare.”)
November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most. ")
September 4 <<<<<<<<< November 4 >>>>>>>> January 4
October 22, 1857 (“But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? ”)
October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”)November 1, 1853 (I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood-lot last winter.)
November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare.”)
November 3, 1861 ("All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most. ")
November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”)
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. All that is evergreen in me revived at once. ")
November 25, 1857 ("I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set.")
November 26, 1859 (“The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. 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. At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant.”)
November 30, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, Wachusett is seen over Walden.”)
December 11, 1855; ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”)
December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”)
November 4, 2013
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.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 4
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
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 4
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 © 2009-2021
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