Distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon / pine leaves are fallen.

November 9.


It is a pleasant surprise to walk over a hill where an old wood has recently been cut off, and, on looking round, to see, instead of dense ranks of trees almost impermeable to light, distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village over an expanded open country. 

November 9, 2022

I now take this in preference to all my old familiar walks. So a new prospect and walks can be created where we least expected it.

***

The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.

The pitcher plant, though a little frost-bitten and often cut off by the mower, now stands full of water in the meadows. I never found one that had not an insect in it. 

***

I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods. 

***

The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off. 

Just a month ago, I observed that the white pines were parti-colored, green and yellow, the needles of the previous year now falling. Now I do not observe any yellow ones, and I expect to find that it is only for a few weeks in the fall after the new leaves have done growing that there are any yellow and falling, — that there is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen.

The trees were not so tidy then; they are not so full now. They look best when contrasted with a field of snow.  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1850

A pleasant surprise to walk over a hill . . . to see. . . distant well-known blue mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village. See November 9, 1851 ("To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood"); November 11, 1851 ("The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another ... to him who has."); November 22, 1860 ("Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountaintop through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.") See also September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day."); October 22, 1857 (" But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it?"); November 4, 1857("But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."); December 8, 1854("Why do the mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Horizon

Distant mountain top

as blue to the memory

as now to the eyes.

March 31, 1853

Distant well-known blue
mountains in the horizon --
pine leaves are fallen.

November 9, 1850

I found many fresh violets. See  November 7, 1851 ("Viola pedata in blossom."); November 8, 1851 ("Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer See November 8, 1857 ("I do not know exactly what that sweet word is which the chickadee says when it hops near to me now in those ravines.
The chickadee /Hops near to me.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

The pitcher plant, though a little frost-bitten . . . now stands full of water in the meadows. See November 11, 1858 ("In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. "); November 15, 1857 ("The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant


The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off.  See November 9, 1858 (" The trees on the hill just north of Alcott’s land, which I saw yesterday so distinctly from Ponkawtasset, and thought were either larches or aspens, prove to be larches. On a hill like this it seems they are later to change and brighter now than those in the Abel Heywood swamp, which are brownish-yellow. The first-named larches were quite as distinct amid the pines seen a mile off as near at hand.") See also November 8, 1853("The yellow larch leaves still hold on, — later than those of any of our pines. "); November 13, 1858 ("Larches now look dark or brownish yellow. Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves, the sheltered dogwood is withered, and even the scarlet oak may be considered as extinguished, and the larch looks brown and nearly bare."). and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Larch

There is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Fall

There is a season 

when old pine leaves are yellow – 

then they are fallen.

November 9, 1850