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 19, 2021
Indian summer –
has it not fine calm spring days
answering to it?
My boat find covered
with spiders whose fine lines soon
stretch from side to side.
November 19. 1853
Oak wood of old trees
half a mile east of Wayland –
behind the grave-yard.
November 19, 1860
These nuts not gathered –
one who used to get them has
committed suicide.
November 19, 1858
November 19, 2016
This is a very pleasant and warm Indian-summer afternoon. Methinks we have not had one like it since October. November 19, 1853
This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm. November 19, 1853
My boat I find to be covered with spiders, whose fine lines soon stretch from side to side. November 19, 1853
What is the peculiarity of the Indian summer? From the 14th to the 21st October inclusive, this year, was perfect Indian summer; and this day the next? November 19, 1853
Methinks that any particularly pleasant and warmer weather after the middle of October is thus called. Has it not fine, calm spring days answering to it? November 19, 1853
Mr. Bradshaw. . . tells me of a small oak wood of old trees called More's, half a mile east of Wayland, behind the grave-yard. November 19, 1860
Mocker-nutting . . .I shook the trees. It is just the time to get them. How hard they rattle down, like stones! There is a harmony between this stony fruit and these hard, tough limbs which bear it. November 19, 1858
Those long mocker-nuts appear not to have got well ripe this year. They do not shed their husks, and the meat is mostly skinny and soft and flabby. Perhaps the season has been too cold . . .The husks of one tree scarcely gaped open at all, and could not be removed. November 19, 1858
I did not think at first why these nuts had not been gathered, but I suspect it may be because Puffer, who probably used to get them, has committed suicide. November 19, 1858
I see many acorn and other nut shells which in past years have been tucked into clefts in the rocks. 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 19, 1857
They run up the twigs in the night and gather this shining fruit, take out the small seeds, and eat their kernels at the entrance to their burrows. The ground is strewn with them there. November 19, 1857
Going along close under the Cliffs, I see a dozen or more low blackberry vines dangling down a perpendicular rock at least eight feet high, and blown back and forth, with leaves every six inches, and one or two have reached the ground and taken firm root there. November 19, 1857
There are also many of the common cinquefoil with its leaves five inches asunder, dangling down five or six feet over the same rock. November 19, 1857
Autumnal dandelion quite fresh. Tansy very fresh yesterday November 19, 1853
Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous. November 19, 1850
The lambkill and water andromeda are turned quite dark red where much exposed; in shelter are green yet. November 19, 1858
Up river in boat to Hubbard's meadow, cranberrying. They redden all the lee shore, the water being still apparently at the same level with the 16th. November 19, 1853
Got a bushel and a half of cranberries, mixed with chaff. November 19, 1853
A cold, gray day, once spitting snow. Water froze in tubs enough to bear last night. November 19, 1855
I was surprised to see how much the hickory-tops had been bent and split, apparently by ice, tough as they are. They seem to have suffered more than evergreens do. November 19, 1858
November 19, 2016
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Hickory
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Checkerberry
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November
 |
| November 19, 2016 |
May 17, 1858 (“While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered.”)
October 20, 1856 ("I think that all spiders can walk on water, for when, last summer, I knocked one off my boat by chance, he ran swiftly back to the boat and climbed up, as if more to avoid the fishes than the water.”)
October 20, 1860 ("I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old.”)
November 2, 1860 ("Wetherbee's oak wood ... The trees would average probably between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years. Such a wood has got to be very rare in this neighborhood.”).
November 3, 1858 ("The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this.")
November 5, 1860 (Blood's oak lot.. . .This wood is a hundred to a hundred and sixty years old.)
November 6, 1854 (“It is suddenly cold. Pools frozen so as to bear.”)
November 7, 1853 (“I shook two mocker-nut trees; one just ready to drop its nuts, and most came out of the shells. But the other tree was not ready; only a part fell, and those mostly in the shells.”)
November 8, 1858 ("He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury. A boy slept in the chamber with him, and, hearing a noise, got and found __ on the floor with both his jugular veins cut.")
November 10, 1860 ("Inches Wood . . .as fine an oak wood as there is in New England.")
November 14, 1857 (“I have but little doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse. ”)
November 18, 1852 ("These are cold, gray days. ")
November 18, 1858 ("Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts.")
November 19, 2021
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 19
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
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