I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days.

November 8

The dark spruce tree at Sherman's; its vicinity the site for a house.

Ah, those sun-sparkles on Dudley Pond in this November air! what a heaven to live in! Intensely brilliant, as no artificial light I have seen, like a dance of diamonds. Coarse mazes of a diamond dance seen through the trees.

All objects shine to-day, even the sportsmen seen at a distance, as if a cavern were unroofed, and its crystals gave entertainment to the sun. This great see saw of brilliants, the åvýpionov yélaoua.

You look several inches into the sod.

The cedarn hills.

The squirrels that run across the road sport their tails like banners.

The gray squirrels in their cylinders are set out in the sun.

When I saw the bare sand at Cochituate I felt my relation to the soil.
These are my sands not yet run out. Not yet will the fates turn the glass. This air have I title to taint with my decay. In this clean sand my bones will gladly lie. 

Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. Here ever springing, never dying, with perennial root I stand; for the winter of the land is warm to me. While the flowers bloom again as in the spring, shall I pine? When I see her sands exposed, thrown up from beneath the surface, it touches me inwardly, it reminds me of my origin; for I am such a plant, so native to New England, me thinks, as springs from the sand cast up from below.

I find ice under the north side of woods nearly an inch thick, where the acorns are frozen in, which have dropped from the overhanging oaks and been saved from the squirrels, perchance by the water.

W. E. C. says he found a ripe strawberry last week in Berkshire.

Saw a frog at the Swamp Bridge on back road.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , November 8, 1851

Ah, those sun-sparkles on Dudley Pond. See November 7, 1851 ("Returned by the south side of Dudley Pond.")

When I saw the bare sand at Cochituate I felt my relation to the soil. See November 7, 1851 ("Cochituate. . . .The glorious sandy banks far and near, caving and sliding, — far sandy slopes, the forts of the land, where you see the naked flesh of New England, . . .Dear to me to lie in, this sand; fit to preserve the bones of a race for thousands of years to come. And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander.")

Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. See November 7, 1851 ("The mayflower leaves we saw there, and the Viola pedata in blossom.") See also September 8, 1851 ("Plants commonly soon cease to grow for the year, unless they may have a fall growth, which is a kind of second spring. In the feelings of the man, too, the year is already past, and he looks forward to the coming winter.  His occasional rejuvenescence and faith in the current time is like the aftermath, a scanty crop. . . .It is a season of withering, of dust and heat, a season of small fruits and trivial experiences.  . . . But there is an aftermath in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom again, followed by an Indian summer of finer atmosphere and of a pensive beauty.  May my life be not destitute of its Indian summer, a season of fine and clear, mild weather in which I may prolong my hunting before the winter comes,");  September 28, 1852 (" I find the hood-leaved violet quite abundant in a meadow, and the pedata in the Boulder Field . . . This is the commencement, then, of the second spring");  October 22, 1859 ("In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us"); October 23, 1853 ("The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. "); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”)