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's bare bleak
inaccessible beauty
seen through a clear air.
November 22, 2022
This is a very beautiful November day, – a cool but clear, crystalline air. November 22, 1860 This is quite a pleasant day, but hardly amounting to Indian summer. November 22, 1858 Ground white with snow a few hours. November 22, 1859 Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also. November 22, 1853 It is a day to behold and to ramble over the hard (stiffening) and withered surface of the tawny earth. November 22, 1860 Turnip freshly in bloom in cultivated fields; knawel still; yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent. November 22, 1853 The milkweed pods by the roadside are yet but half emptied of their silky contents. For months the gales are dispersing their seeds, though we have had snow. November 22, 1851 At the brook the partridge-berries checker the ground with their leaves, now interspersed with red berries. November 22, 1851 I was just thinking it would be fine to get a specimen leaf from each changing tree and shrub and plant in autumn, in September and October, when it had got its brightest characteristic color, the intermediate ripeness in its transition from the green to the russet or brown state, outline and copy its color exactly with paint in a book, a book which should be a memorial of October, be entitled October Hues or Autunnal Tints.November 22, 1853 I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata and the tint of the scarlet maple.November 22, 1853 Every plant's down glitters with a silvery light along the Marlborough road. November 22, 1860 A thousand bare twigs gleam like cobwebs in the sun. November 22, 1860 Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. November 22, 1860 Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him. November 22, 1860 I rejoice in the bare, bleak, hard, and barren-looking surface of the tawny pastures, the firm outline of the hills, and the air so bracing and wholesome. November 22, 1860  Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain- top through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon. November 22, 1860 The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine between you and it, after a raw and louring afternoon near the beginning of winter, is a memorable phenomenon. November 22, 1851 A sort of Indian summer in the day, which thus far has been denied to the year. After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire. November 22, 1851 Though you are finger-cold toward night, and you cast a stone on to your first ice, and see the unmelted crystals under every bank, it is glorious November weather, and only November fruits are out. November 22, 1860
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens) A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed. A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, to effect the quality of the day A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November days A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Moods A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today.") May 18, 1852 ("The world can never be more beautiful than now.") August 19, 1853 ("It is a glorious and ever-memorable day.") October 25, 1858 ("The leaves of the Populus grandidentata, though half fallen and turned a pure and handsome yellow, are still wagging as fast as ever. These do not lose their color and wither on the tree . . .but they are fresh and unwilted, full of sap and fair as ever when they are first strewn on the ground. I do not think of any tree whose leaves are so fresh and fair when they fall.") October 28, 1852 (“Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.”); October 28, 1857 ("All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light") November 9, 1858 (“ We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year."); November 10, 1858 ("A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow. "); November 17, 1858 ( The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. ") November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves.") November 18, 1857 ("The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. . . .This is November sunlight."); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.”) November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces.") November 20, 1858 ("The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting.") November 23, 1851 ("Another such a sunset to - night as the last.") November 23, 1852 ("The beauty and purity of new-fallen snow.") November 25, 1850 ("Cold as it is, has been a sort of Indian summer . . . This afternoon the air was indescribably clear and exhilarating.") November 25, 1851 ("That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine.") November 29, 1852 ("About 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described, lighting up the pitch pines and everything.") November 29, 1853 (Suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape. . . I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year."")
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 22 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 https://tinyurl.com/HDT22NOV |
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