November 1.
November 1, 2018
It is a rare qualification to be able to state a fact simply and adequately, to digest some experience cleanly, to say “yes” and “no” with authority, to make a square edge, to conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact, even as a waterfowl an eel, as it flies over the meadows, thus stocking new waters. First of all a man must see, before he can say.
Statements are made but partially. Things are said with reference to certain conventions or existing institutions, not absolutely.
A fact truly and absolutely stated is taken out of the region of common sense and acquires a mythologic or universal significance. Say it and have done with it. Express it without expressing yourself. See not with the eye of science, which is barren, nor of youthful poetry, which is impotent. But taste the world and digest it.
It would seem as if things got said but rarely and by chance.
As you see, so at length will you say.
When facts are seen superficially, they are seen as they lie in relation to certain institutions, perchance.
But I would have them expressed as more deeply seen, with deeper references; so that the hearer or reader cannot recognize them or apprehend their significance from the platform of common life, but it will be necessary that he be in a sense translated in order to understand them; when the truth respecting his things shall naturally exhale from a man like the odor of the muskrat from the coat of the trapper.
At first blush a man is not capable of reporting truth; he must be drenched and saturated with it first.
What was enthusiasm in the young man must become temperament in the mature man. Without excitement, heat, or passion, he will survey the world which excited the youth and threw him off his balance.
As all things are significant, so all words should be significant.
It is a fault which attaches to the speaker, to speak flippantly or superficially of anything.
Of what use are words which do not move the hearer, are not oracular and fateful?
A style in which the matter is all in all, and the manner nothing at all.
In your thoughts no more than in your walks do you meet men.
In moods I find such privacy as in dismal swamps and on mountain-tops.
Man recognizes laws little enforced, and he condescends to obey them. In the moment that he feels his superiority to them as compulsatory, he, as it were, courteously reënacts them but to obey them.
In your thoughts no more than in your walks do you meet men.
In moods I find such privacy as in dismal swamps and on mountain-tops.
Man recognizes laws little enforced, and he condescends to obey them. In the moment that he feels his superiority to them as compulsatory, he, as it were, courteously reënacts them but to obey them.
This on my way to Conantum, 2.30 P. M.
It is a bright, clear, warm November day.
The woods are now much more open than when I last observed them; the leaves have fallen, and they let in light, and I see the sky through them as through a crow's wing in every direction.
For the most part only the pines and oaks (white?) retain their leaves. At a distance, accordingly, the forest is green and reddish.
The crickets now sound faintly and from very deep in the sod.
Minott says that G. M. Barrett told him that Amos Baker told him that during Concord Fight he went over behind the hill to the old Whittaker place (Sam Buttrick's) and stayed. Yet he was described as the only survivor of Concord Fight. Received a pension for running away?
I feel blessed.
I love my life.
I warm toward all nature.
The woods are now much more open than when I last observed them; the leaves have fallen, and they let in light, and I see the sky through them as through a crow's wing in every direction.
For the most part only the pines and oaks (white?) retain their leaves. At a distance, accordingly, the forest is green and reddish.
The crickets now sound faintly and from very deep in the sod.
Minott says that G. M. Barrett told him that Amos Baker told him that during Concord Fight he went over behind the hill to the old Whittaker place (Sam Buttrick's) and stayed. Yet he was described as the only survivor of Concord Fight. Received a pension for running away?
Fall dandelions look bright still.
The grass has got a new greenness in spots.
At this season there are stranger sparrows or finches about.
The skunk-cabbage is already pushing up again.
The alders have lost their leaves, and the willows except a few shrivelled ones.
It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road, and yet I cannot see them in any other direction, and feel not one. It looks as if the birds would be incommoded. They have the effect of a shimmer in the air. This shimmer, moving along them as they are waved by the wind, gives the effect of a drifting storm of light. It is more like a fine snow-storm which drifts athwart your path than anything else. What is the peculiar condition of the atmosphere, to call forth this activity? If there were no sunshine, I should never find out that they existed, I should not know that I was bursting a myriad barriers. Though you break them with your person, you feel not one.
Why should this day be so distinguished?
The grass has got a new greenness in spots.
At this season there are stranger sparrows or finches about.
The skunk-cabbage is already pushing up again.
The alders have lost their leaves, and the willows except a few shrivelled ones.
It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road, and yet I cannot see them in any other direction, and feel not one. It looks as if the birds would be incommoded. They have the effect of a shimmer in the air. This shimmer, moving along them as they are waved by the wind, gives the effect of a drifting storm of light. It is more like a fine snow-storm which drifts athwart your path than anything else. What is the peculiar condition of the atmosphere, to call forth this activity? If there were no sunshine, I should never find out that they existed, I should not know that I was bursting a myriad barriers. Though you break them with your person, you feel not one.
Why should this day be so distinguished?
The rain of night before last has raised the river at least two feet, and the meadows wear a late-fall look. The naked and weedy stems of the button-bush are suddenly submerged; you no longer look for pickerel from the bridges. The shallow and shrunken shore is also submerged.
I see so far and distinctly, my eyes seem to slide in this clear air.
The river is peculiarly sky-blue to-day, not dark as usual.
It is all in the air.
The cinquefoil on Conantum.
Counted one hundred and twenty five crows in one straggling flock moving westward.
The red shrub oak leaves abide on the hills.
The witch-hazels have mostly lost their blossoms, perhaps on account of the snow.
The ground wears its red carpet under the pines.
The pitch pines show new buds at the end of their plumes. How long this?
Saw a canoe birch by road beyond the Abel Minott house; distinguished it thirty rods off by the chalky whiteness of its limbs.
It is of a more unspotted, transparent, and perhaps pinkish white than the common, has considerable branches as well as white ones, and its branches do not droop and curl downward like that. There will be some loose curls of bark about it.
The common birch is finely branched and has frequently a snarly head; the former is a more open and free-growing tree.
If at a distance you see the birch near its top forking into two or more white limbs, you may know it for a canoe birch. You can tell where it has grown after the wood has turned to mould by a small fragment of its bark still left,-if it divides readily.
The common birch is more covered with moss, has the aspect of having grown more slowly, and has many more branches.
I have heard of a man in Maine who copied the whole Bible on to birch bark.
It was so much easier than to write that sentence which the birch tree stands for.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1851
I see so far and distinctly, my eyes seem to slide in this clear air.
The river is peculiarly sky-blue to-day, not dark as usual.
It is all in the air.
The cinquefoil on Conantum.
Counted one hundred and twenty five crows in one straggling flock moving westward.
The red shrub oak leaves abide on the hills.
The witch-hazels have mostly lost their blossoms, perhaps on account of the snow.
The ground wears its red carpet under the pines.
The pitch pines show new buds at the end of their plumes. How long this?
Saw a canoe birch by road beyond the Abel Minott house; distinguished it thirty rods off by the chalky whiteness of its limbs.
It is of a more unspotted, transparent, and perhaps pinkish white than the common, has considerable branches as well as white ones, and its branches do not droop and curl downward like that. There will be some loose curls of bark about it.
The common birch is finely branched and has frequently a snarly head; the former is a more open and free-growing tree.
If at a distance you see the birch near its top forking into two or more white limbs, you may know it for a canoe birch. You can tell where it has grown after the wood has turned to mould by a small fragment of its bark still left,-if it divides readily.
The common birch is more covered with moss, has the aspect of having grown more slowly, and has many more branches.
I have heard of a man in Maine who copied the whole Bible on to birch bark.
It was so much easier than to write that sentence which the birch tree stands for.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1851
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