Reflected moods of the seasons.

October 26

October 26, 2019

It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us.  You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. 

When I meet with any such in my Journal, it affects me as poetry.  I appreciate that other season and that particular phenomenon more than at the time. Only the rarest flower, the purest melody, of the season thus comes down to us. 

April 26, 2021

(What we should have called

a warm day in March is a

cold one at this date.

April 26, 1860)

The world so seen is all one spring, and full of beauty. 

As I go up the back road, see fresh sprouts in bloom on a tall rough goldenrod. 

The dense maple swamp against Potter's pasture is completely bare, and the ground is very thickly strewn with leaves, which conceal the wet places. 

October 26, 2018

Now leaves are off, or chiefly off, I begin to notice the buds of various form and color and more or less conspicuous, prepared for another season, — partly, too, perhaps, for food for birds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1853

It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. See May 10, 1852 ("We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then.”); April 7, 1853 ("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.”); August 24, 1852 (“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.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

The dense maple swamp against Potter's pasture is completely bare, and the ground is very thickly strewn with leaves. See October 4, 1857 ("At Potter's Swamp, where they are all maples, it adds to the beauty of the maple swamp at this season that it is not seen as a simple mass of color, but, different trees being of different tints, – green, yellow, scarlet, crimson, and different shades of each, – the out line of each tree is distinct to where one laps on to another."); October 22, 1855 ("In Potter’s maple swamp, where the red maple leaves lie in thick beds on the ground, what a strong mustiness, even sourness in some places! Yet I like this scent. With the present associations, sweet to me is the mustiness of the grave itself."); November 5, 1855 ("Walk through Potter’s Swamp. The brightness of the foliage generally ceased pretty exactly with October.")

I begin to notice the buds. See October 12, 1858 ("The leaves of the azaleas are falling, mostly fallen, and revealing the large blossom-buds, so prepared are they for another year."): October 25, 1858 ("Now that the leaves are fallen (for a few days), the long yellow buds (often red-pointed) which sleep along the twigs of the S. discolor are very conspicuous and quite interesting, already even carrying our thoughts for ward to spring. I noticed them first on the 22d. They may be put with the azalea buds already noticed. Even bleak and barren November wears these gems on her breast in sign of the coming year."); October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring.");January 25, 1858 ("What a rich book might be made about buds.")

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

Now leaves are off we

notice the buds prepared for

another season.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,

Reflected moods of the seasons.

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/HDT531026

The night side of the woods

June 11.

A beautiful summer night, not too warm, moon not quite full, after two or three rainy days. Walk to Fair Haven by railroad, returning by Potter's pasture and Sudbury road. 

When I get away from the town and deeper into the night, I hear whip-poor-wills, and see fireflies in the meadow.

The whip-poor-will suggests how wide asunder the woods and the town. Its note is very rarely heard by those who live on the street, and then it is thought  to be of ill omen.  But go into the woods in a warm night at this season, and it is the prevailing sound. 

I hear some whip-poor-wills on hills, others in thick wooded vales that ring hollow and cavernous with their note. I hear now five or six at once.

It is a bird not only of the woods, but of the night side of the woods. It is no more of ill omen here than the night and the moonlight are. 

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1851

See July 16, 1850  ("Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different season. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars; instead of the wood thrush, there is the whip-poor-will; instead of butterflies, fireflies, winged sparks of fire!")