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 17, 2019
Looking to sunlight
on pale-brown bleached fields these days
as to a wood-fire.
November 17, 2015
Another Indian-summer day, as fair as any we've had. November 17, 1859
The musquash are active, swimming about in the further pond to-day, — this Indian-summer day. Channing also sees them thus stirring in the river this afternoon. November 17, 1859
The musquash are more active since the cold weather. I see more of them about the river now, swimming back and forth across the river, and diving in the middle, where I lose them. November 17, 1858
One sitting in the sun, as if for warmth, on the opposite shore to me looks quite reddish brown. They avail themselves of the edge of the ice now found along the sides of the river to feed on. November 17, 1858
Nature is moderate and loves degrees. November 17, 1858
Mink seem to be more commonly seen now, and the rising of the river begins to drive out the muskrats.November 17, 1855
I think it must have been a fish hawk which I saw hovering over the meadow and my boat (a raw cloudy afternoon), now and then sustaining itself in one place a hundred feet or more above the water, intent on a fish, with a hovering or fluttering motion of the wings somewhat like a kingfisher. Its wings were very long, slender, and curved in outline of front edge. I think there was some white on rump. It alighted near the top of an oak within rifle-shot of me and my boat, afterward on the tip-top of a maple by waterside, looking very large. November 17, 1854
I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up from the weeds within a stone’s throw of my boat’s place. It drops its excrement from thirty feet in the air, and this falling, one part being heavier than another, takes the form of a snake, and suggests that this may be the origin of some of the stories of this bird swallowing a snake or eel which passed through it. November 17, 1858
At the pond-side I see titmice alighting on the now hoary gray golden rod and hanging back downward from it, as if eating its seeds; or could they have been looking for insects? There were three or four about it. November 17, 1859
We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. November 17, 1858
I sit in the sun on the northeast side of the first Andromeda Pond, looking over it toward the sun. How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp - a glowing, warm brown red in the Indian-summer sun, like a bed of moss in a hollow in the woods, with gray high blueberry and straw-colored grasses interspersed. And when, going round it, you look over it in the opposite direction, it presents a gray aspect. November 17, 1859
Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner which would not be believed if described. . . .. Yet as I saw it, there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. November 17, 1858
The very sunlight on the pale-brown bleached fields is an interesting object these cold days. I naturally look toward [it] as to a wood-fire. November 17, 1858
A myriad of surfaces are now prepared to reflect the light. This is one of the hundred silvery lights of November. The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. November 17, 1858
These tawny-white oaks are thus by their color and character the lions among trees, or rather, not to compare them with a foreign animal, they are the cougars or panthers – the American lions — among the trees. November 17, 1860
The dry fields have for a long time been spotted with the small radical leaves of the fragrant life-everlasting. November 17, 1853
I notice that many plants about this season of the year or earlier, after they have died down at top, put forth fresh and conspicuous radical leaves against another spring. November 17, 1853
Lycopodium dendroideum . . . was apparently in its prime yesterday. November 17, 1858
So it would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. It was coincident with this prominence. November 17, 1858
The polypody on the rock is much shrivelled by the late cold. The edges are curled up, and it is not nearly so fair as it was ten days ago. November 17, 1858
Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold. November 17, 1855
Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. I see one thing when it is cold and another when it is warm. November 17, 1858
November 17. 2018
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The andromeda phenomenon
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Polypody
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Snow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Driver)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now
April 24, 1859 (" There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season....The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's.”)
June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”)
September 20, 1855("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises“)
October 25, 1858 (“Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light. ”
November 3, 1853 ("Now is the time to observe the radical leaves of many plants, which put forth with springlike vigor and are so unlike the others with which we are familiar that it is sometimes difficult to identify them.")
November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.”)
November 11, 1853 (“A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which perchance is the steam of the melting frost. Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields.”);
November 13, 1858 ("Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight”)
November 13, 1855 ("Going over Swamp Bridge Brook at 3 P. M., I saw in the pond by the roadside, a few rods before me, the sun shining bright, a mink swimming . . . “)
A myriad of
surfaces are now prepared
to reflect the light.
November 17, 1858
Windows reflect the
setting sun more brightly now
than other seasons.
November 21, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.")
November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow.")\
December 2, 1852 ("Above the bridge . . .we see a mink, slender, black, very like a weasel in form.He alternately runs along on the ice and swims in the water, now and then holding up his head and long neck looking at us.")
December 7, 1857 (“I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s.”)
December 23, 1855 ("At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, mullein, columbine, veronica, thyme-leaved sandwort, spleenwort, strawberry, buttercup, radical johnswort, mouse-ear, radical pinweeds, cinquefoils, checkerberry, Wintergreen, thistles, catnip, Turritis strictae specially fresh and bright.")
January 10, 1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows...")
January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it...);
November 17, 2018
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 17
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 © 2009-2023
https://tinyurl.com/HDT17NOV
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