The sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood.

November 1

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond over Cliffs.

Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.

When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus. 

Going over the high field west of the cut, my foot strikes a rattle-pod in the stubble, and it is betrayed. From that faint sound I knew it must be there, and went back and found it. I could have told it as well in the dark. How often I have found pennyroyal by the fragrance it emitted when bruised by my feet! 

The lowest and most succulent oak sprouts in exposed places are red or green longest. Large trees quite protected from sun and wind will be greener still. 

The larches are at the height of their change. 

I see much witch-hazel in the swamp by the south end of the Abiel Wheeler grape meadow. Some of it is quite fresh and bright. Its bark is alternate white and smooth reddish-brown, the small twigs looking as if gossamer had lodged on and draped them. What a lively spray it has, both in form and color! Truly it looks as if it would make divining-rods, – as if its twigs knew where the true gold was and could point to it. The gold is in their late blossoms. Let them alone and they never point down to earth. They impart to the whole hillside a speckled, parti-colored look. 

I see the common prinos berries partly eaten about the hole of a mouse under a stump. 

As I return by the Well Meadow Field and then Wheeler’s large wood, the sun shines from over Fair Haven Hill into the wood, and I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn. 

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. 

Jersey tea has perhaps the most green leaves of any shrub at present.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1857


The larches are at the height of their change. See November 1, 1858 (Now you easily detect where larches grow ... They are far more distinct than at any other season. They are very regular soft yellow pyramids, as I see them from the Poplar Hill""); November 4, 1855 (“Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.”); October 27 1855 (“Larches are yellowing.”); October 24, 1852 (“The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance. ”)

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. See August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”)

November 1. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 1

This dry crisp rustle – 

withered leaves on oak trees, a 

sharper susurrus. 

I see that the sun

will shine into a thick wood, 

lighting it all up,

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A  man will eat his heart,

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

Walking before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light.

December 24

December  24, 2016

More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches. 

P. M. — To Walden and Baker Farm with Ricketson, it still snowing a little. 

Turn off from railroad and went through Wheeler, or Owl, Wood. The snow is very light, so that sleighs cut through it, and there is but little sleighing. 

It is very handsome now on the trees by the main path in Wheeler Wood; also on the weeds and twigs that rise above the snow, resting on them just like down, light towers of down with the bare extremity of the twig peeping out  above. 

We push through the light dust, throwing it before our legs as a husbandman grain which he is sowing. It is only in still paths in the woods that it rests on the trees much. 

Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet, the ice appears quite black by contrast. 

There is considerable snow on the edge of the pine woods where I used to live. It rests on the successive tiers of boughs, perhaps weighing them down, so that the trees are opened into great flakes from top to bottom. 

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. 

Return across the pond and go across to Baker Farm. 

Notice, at east end of westernmost Andromeda Pond, the slender spikes of lycopus with half a dozen distant little spherical dark-brown whorls of pungently fragrant or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like, or even like flagroot (?), when bruised. I am not sure that the seeds of any other mint are thus fragrant now. It scents your handkerchief or pocketbook finely when the crumbled whorls are sprinkled over them. 

It is very pleasant walking thus before the storm is over, in the soft, subdued light. We are also more domesticated in nature when our vision is confined to near and familiar objects. 

Do not see a track of any animal till returning near the Well Meadow Field, where many foxes (?), one of whom I have a glimpse of, had been coursing back and forth in the path and near it for three quarters of a mile. They had made quite a path. 

I do not take snuff. In my winter walks, I stoop and bruise between my thumb and finger the dry whorls of the lycopus, or water horehound, just rising above the snow, stripping them off, and smell that. That is as near as I come to the Spice Islands. That is my smelling-bottle, my ointment.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 24, 1856

The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now. See December 26, 1853  ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig. And every twig thus laden is as still as the hillside itself. The sight . . . would tempt us to begin life again.”); January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”); February 21, 1854 ("You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.") 

Foxes . . . one of whom I have a glimpse of . . . See February 10, 1856 ("I saw a fox on the railroad. . . He coursed, or glided, along easily, appearing not to lift his feet high, leaping over obstacles, with his tail extended straight behind. He leaped over the ridge of snow . . . between the tracks, very easily and gracefully.”)

The voice of the wood.

December 19.

December 19, 2021

I rode back to Nashua in the morning  —   Knew the road by some yellow birch trees in a swamp and some rails set on end around a white oak in a pasture. These it seems were the objects I had noticed. 

In Nashua observed, as I thought, some elms in the distance which had been whitewashed. It turned out that they were covered from top to bottom, on one side, with the frozen vapor from a fall on the canal.

Walked a little way along the bank of the Merrimack, which was frozen over, and was agreeably reminded of my voyage up it. 

The night previous, in Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. In the morning there was to be seen a long crack across the road in front. I saw several of these here in Nashua, and ran a bit of stubble into them but in no place more than five inches. This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights. 

Observed that the Nashua in Pepperell was frozen to the very edge of the fall, and even further in some places. 

Got home at 1.30 p. m. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Walden froze completely over last night. This is very sudden, for on the evening of the 15th there was not a particle of ice in it. In just three days, then, it has been completely frozen over, and the ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks, which are already very numerous, but, having been made at different stages of the ice, they indicate very various thicknesses. Often one only an inch deep crosses at right angles another two and a half inches deep, the last having been recently made and indicating the real thickness of the ice. 

I advance confidently toward the middle, keeping within a few feet of some distinct crack two inches or more deep, but when that fails me and I see only cracks an inch or an inch and a half deep, or none at all, I walk with great caution and timidity, though the ice may be as thick as ever, but I have no longer the means of determining its thickness. 

The ice is so transparent that it is too much like walking on water by faith. 

The portion of the pond which was last frozen is a thinner and darker ice stretching about across the middle from southeast to northwest, i. e. from the shoulder of the Deep Cove to nearly midway between the bar and Ice-Fort Cove Cape. 

Close to the northwest end of this, there is a small and narrow place twenty feet long east and west, which is still so thin that a small stone makes a hole. The water, judging from my map, may[be] seventy or seventy-five feet deep there. It looks as if that had been the warmest place in the surface of the pond and therefore the last to yield to the frost king. 

Into this, or into the thinner ice at this point, there empties, as it were, a narrow meandering creek from near the western shore, which was nearly as late to freeze as any part. All this, I think, I have noticed in previous years. 

About the edge of all this more recent and darker ice, the thicker ice is white with a feathery frost, which seems to have been produced by the very fine spray, or rather the vapor, blown from the yet unfrozen surface on to the ice by the strong and cold wind. Here is where, so to speak, its last animal heat escaped, the dying breath of the pond frozen on its lips. It had the same origin with the frost about the mouth of a hole in the ground whence warm vapors had escaped. 

The fluid, timid pond was encircled within an ever-narrowing circle by the icy grasp of winter, and this is a trace of the last vaporous breath that curled along its trembling surface. Here the chilled pond gave up the ghost. 

As I stand here, I hear the hooting of my old acquaintance the owl in Wheeler's Wood. Do I not oftenest hear it just before sundown? This sound, heard near at hand, is more simply animal and guttural, without resonance or reverberation, but, heard here from out the depths of the wood, it sounds peculiarly hollow and drum-like, as if it struck on a tense skin drawn around, the tympanum of the wood, through which all we denizens of nature hear. 

Thus it comes to us an accredited and universal or melodious sound; is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well. The owl only touches the stops, or rather wakes the reverberations. For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. It sounds now, hoo | hoo hoo (very fast) | hoo-rer | hoo. 

Withered leaves! this is our frugal winter diet, in stead of the juicy salads of spring and summer. I think I could write a lecture on "Dry Leaves," carrying a specimen of each kind that hangs on in the winter into the lecture-room as the heads of my discourse. They have long hung to some extent in vain, and have not found their poet yet. 

The pine has been sung, but not, to my knowledge, the shrub oak. Most think it is useless. How glad I am that it serves no vulgar use! It is never seen on the woodman's cart. The citizen who has just bought a sprout-land on which shrub oaks alone come up only curses it. But it serves a higher use than they know. Shrub oak! how true its name! 

Think first what a family it belongs to. The oak, the king of trees, is its own brother, only of ampler dimensions. The oaks, so famous for grandeur and picturesqueness, so prized for strength by the builder, for knees or for beams; and this is the oak of smaller size, the Esquimau of oaks, the shrub oak! The oaken shrub! I value it first for the noble family it belongs to. 

It is not like brittle sumach or venomous dogwood, which you must beware how you touch, but wholesome to the touch, though rough; not producing any festering sores, only honest scratches and rents.

Dr. Kane says in his "Arctic Explorations," page 21, that at Fiskernaes in Greenland "the springs, which well through the mosses, frequently remain unfrozen throughout the year."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1856

In Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. See December 23, 1856 (“The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights”); February 7, 1855 (“The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, ”)

Walden froze completely over last night. .. . See December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.”); December 27, 1856 "Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.”); December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night.”)  Also December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle"); December 21, 1855 (" Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove. It will probably be finished to-night. (No, it proved too warm.)"); December 21, 1854 ("Walden is frozen over, apparently about two inches thick. It must have frozen, the whole of it, since the snow of the 18th,-— probably the night of the 18th");   December 25, 1858 ("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.");  December 26, 1850 ("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night."); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly."); December 30, 1853 ("The pond [Walden] not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night."); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”).

The ice is now from two and a half to three inches thick, a transparent green ice, through which I see the bottom where it is seven or eight feet deep. See November 23, 1850 (“I lay down on the ice and look through at the bottom.”) Also Walden (“The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass.”); February 3, 1856 (" [the Forth Branch] In one square rod, where they have got out ice and a thin transparent-ice has formed, I can see the pebbly bottom the same as in summer.")

I detect its thickness by looking at the cracks..See December 19, 1854 ("It takes a little while to learn to trust the new black ice; I look for cracks to see how thick it is.")

I hear the hooting of my old acquaintance the owl in Wheeler's Wood. Do I not oftenest hear it just before sundown? Compare December 19, 1851 ("In all woods is heard now far and near the sound of the woodchopper's axe, a twilight sound, now in the night of the year")

For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often. See June 22, 1851 ("The world is a musical instrument. The very touch affords an exquisite pleasure. I awake to its music with the calmness of a lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . .And without effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.”); July 16, 1851 ("This earth was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains.); October 26, 1851 ("The instant that I awoke, methought I was a musical instrument ")

December 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 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

tinyurl.com/hdt561219

To Tommy Wheeler wood-lot.

November 1. 

A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M. and probably warmer at two.

The butterflies are out again, - probably some new broods. I see the common yellow and two Vanessa Antiopa, and yellow-winged grasshoppers with blackish edges.

A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves.

Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air.

Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land, about that now frosty hollow, cut as I judge from sprouts four years ago.  No. 6, having 164 rings and having been cut four years, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1860 

A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M. See November 1, 2015 ("A beautiful Indian-summer day, the most remarkable hitherto and equal to any of the kind. ")

Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air. See November 1, 1851 ("It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road, and yet I cannot see them in any other direction, and feel not one. . . .Why should this day be so distinguished?"); See also November 7, 1855 ("Looking west over Wheeler’s meadow, I see that there has been much gossamer on the grass, and it is now revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”) and note to November 3, 1857 ("Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig,")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land cut four years ago. SeeJuly 8, 1857 (“Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings.”); See also October 20, 1860 ("I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old.”)