Open waters; the Rise and Fall of Goose Pond (Ripple Lake)

 

December 27.  Monday.

Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.

Ground bare.

River open.

I took my new boat out.

Countless birches, white pines, etc., have been killed within a year or two about Goose Pond by the high water. The dead birches have broken in two in the middle and fallen over. In some coves where the water is shallow, their wrecks make quite a dense thicket.

Found chestnuts quite plenty to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1852

See A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. . . .A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.  See  December 11, 1854 ("C. says he found Fair Haven frozen over last Friday, i. e. the 8th. I find Flint’s frozen to-day."); December 27, 1856 ("Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay."); December 27, 1857 ("Walden is almost entirely skimmed over. It will probably be completely frozen over to-night.") See also December 17, 1859 ("Two or three acres of Walden, off the bar, not yet frozen. Saw in [it] a good-sized black duck, which did not dive while I looked."); December 18, 1858 ("The pond is merely frozen a little about the edges. I see various little fishes lurking under this thin, transparent ice, close up to the edge or shore, especially where the shore is flat and water shoal."); . December 19, 1856 ("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,"); December 20, 1858("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle");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 21, 1855 ("Walden is skimmed over, all but an acre, in my cove.");December 21, 1856("The pond [Walden] is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 22, 1853("A slight whitening of snow last evening, the second whitening of the winter, just enough to spoil the skating, now ten days old, on the ponds. Walden skimmed over in the widest part, but some acres still open; will probably freeze entirely to-night if this weather holds."); December 23, 1845 ("The pond froze over last night entirely for the first time, yet so as not to be safe to walk upon."); December 23, 1850("Walden is frozen, one third of it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the shore on one side only."); December 24, 1853("Walden almost entirely open again."); December 24, 1856("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle.); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night!"); December 24, 1859("There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week "); December 25, 1858("Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open."); December 26, 1850("Walden not yet more than half frozen over."); December 26, 1853 ("Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, . . .This being the only pond hereabouts that is open"); December 28, 1856 ("Walden completely frozen over again last night."); December 29, 1855 ("Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open,. . .It must be owing to the wind partly.") ;December 30, 1853 ("The pond not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night. "); December 30, 1855 ("There was yesterday eight or ten acres of open water at the west end of Walden, where is depth and breadth combined"); December 31, 1850 ("Walden pond has frozen over since I was there last.”); December 31, 1853 ("Walden froze completely over last night.")

 I took my new boat out.  See December 2, 1852 ("I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before."); December 2, 1854 ("Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it."); December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat,"); December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places"); December 10, 1859 ("Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze."); December 28, 1852 ("Brought my boat from Walden in rain. No snow on ground.") See also December 5, 1856 (" I love to have the river closed up for a season and a pause put to my boating . . . I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without it at all other times.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

River open. See December 13, 1852 ("River and ponds all open. Goose Pond skimmed over"); December 16, 1850 ("Walden is open still. The river is probably open again."); December 17, 1856 ("The river . . . is frozen over again, and I go along the edge of the meadow under Clamshell and back by Hubbard's Bridge."); December 19, 1854 ("Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before.");  December 20, 1854("The river appears to be frozen everywhere. Where was water last night is a firm bridge of ice this morning. .  . At sundown or before, it begins to belch. It is so cold that only in one place did I see a drop of water flowing out on the ice"); December 20, 1855("It [skating] is pretty good on the meadows, which are somewhat overflown, and the sides of the river, but the greater part of it is open. . . . How placid, like silver or like steel in different lights, the surface of the still, living water between these borders of ice, reflecting the weeds and trees, and now the warm colors of the sunset sky!"); December 21, 1855("I here take to the riverside. The broader places are frozen over, but I do not trust them yet. Fair Haven is entirely frozen over, probably some days"); December 25, 1853("Skated to Fair Haven and above.")

Goose Pond high water. See December 5, 1852 ("This great rise of [Walden] pond after an interval of many years, and the water standing at this great height for a year or more, kills the shrubs and trees about its edge, — pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, etc., — and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore"); December 13, 1852 (“I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden. “); November 26, 1858 (“Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. . . ., and what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. I begin to suspect, therefore, that this rise and fall extending through a long series of years is not peculiar to the Walden system of ponds, but is true of ponds generally, and perhaps of rivers”); Compare August 19, 1854 ("Flint's Pond has fallen very much since I was here. The shore is so exposed that you can walk round, which I have not known possible for several years, and the outlet is dry. But Walden is not affected by the drought.")

Found chestnuts quite plenty to-day. See December 31, 1852 ("I was this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some hours thus, scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised.") See also November 28, 1856 ("To chestnut wood by Turnpike, to see if I could find my comb, probably lost out of my pocket when I climbed and shook a chestnut tree more than a month ago. Unexpectedly find many chestnuts in the burs which have fallen some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest,. . . are softer and sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate"); December 12, 1856 (“At the wall between Saw Mill Brook Falls and Red Choke-berry Path, . . see where they [squirrels] have dug the burs out of the snow, and then sat on a rock or the wall and gnawed them in pieces. I, too, dig many burs out of the snow with my foot”); December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left the trunks on the snow."); January 25, 1853 ("I still pick chestnuts.")

A Book of the Seasons: November 26 (boat out, winter birds, the wild)

 

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 26.

Got my boat up this

Thanksgiving day afternoon –

one end frozen in.

November 26, 1857

In this oak wood hear 

the faint note of a nuthatch 

like a creaking limb. 

November 26, 1860

I detect it much

nearer than I suspected –

its mate not far off.

November 26, 1860

November 26, 2012

I love to have the river

closed up for a season

and a pause put to my boating

to be obliged to get my boat in.

I shall launch it again in the spring

with so much more pleasure.

I love best to have each thing

in its season only

and enjoy doing without it

at all other times. 

December 5, 1856

Boats are drawn up high which will not be launched again till spring. November 26, 1850

Bottom of boat covered with ice. The ice next the shore bears me and my boat. November 26, 1855

Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in. November 26, 1857

Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual). November 26, 1858

Walden is very low, compared with itself for some years. November 26, 1858

And what is remarkable, I find that not only Goose Pond also has fallen correspondingly within a month, but even the smaller pond-holes only four or five rods over, such as Little Goose Pond, shallow as they are. November 26, 1858

In this mud I found two small frogs, one apparently a Rana palustris less than an inch long.  November 26, 1858

Minott's is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill. November 26, 1857

Not that its form is so incomparable, nor even its weather-stained color, but chiefly, I think, because of its snug and picturesque position on the hillside. November 26, 1857

It is there because somebody was independent or bold enough to carry out the happy thought of placing it high on the hillside. November 26, 1857

The spring comes earlier to that dooryard than to any, and summer lingers longest there. November 26, 1857

It is the locality, not the architecture, that takes us captive. November 26, 1857

In the oak wood counting the rings of a stump, I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off November 26, 1860

This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. November 26, 1860

Commonly they are steadily hopping about the trunks in search of insect food. Yet today the nuthatch picks out from a crevice in the bark of an oak trunk, where it was perpendicular, something white and pretty large. November 26, 1860

The chickadee is the bird of the wood the most unfailing. November 26, 1859

When, in a windy, or in any, day, you have penetrated some thick wood like this, you are pretty sure to hear its cheery note therein. November 26, 1859

At this season it is almost their sole inhabitant. November 26, 1859

I see here today one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. November 26, 1859

It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. November 26, 1859

What that little long-sharp-nosed mouse I found in the Walden road to-day? November 26, 1854

I see in the open field east of Trillium Wood a few pitch pines springing up, from seeds blown from the wood a dozen or fifteen rods off. November 26, 1860

It would be mistaken for a single sprig of moss - that came from the seed this year. It is, as it were, a little green star with many rays, half an inch in diameter.  November 26, 1860

These which are now mistaken for mosses in the grass may become lofty trees which will endure two hundred years, under which no vestige of this grass will be left. November 26, 1860

Thus from pasture this portion of the earth's surface becomes forest. November 26, 1860

No doubt several creatures, like otter and mink and foxes, know where to resort for their food at this season. This is now a perfect otter’s or mink’s preserve. November 26, 1858 

Woods, both the primitive and those which are suffered to spring up in cultivated fields, preserve the mystery of nature. November 26, 1859

It is worth the while to have these thickets on various sides of the town, where the rabbit lurks and the jay builds its nest. November 26, 1859

 

November 26, 2017

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Boat in. Boat out.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The   Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Brown Creeper

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November days

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The world can never be more beautiful than now

*****

November 26, 2017

Walking ("A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”)

April 27, 1854 ("That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse nearby is in harmony with it.")

May 1850 ("I still sit on its Cliff in a new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same delight as ever. It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever, what this world is.")

May 12, 1857 ("It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.”).

May 16, 1860 ("[brown creeper] flies across to another bough, or to the base of another tree, and traces that up, zigzag and prying into the crevices.”)

May 31, 1858 ("I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse.s ")

June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”)

August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”); 

October 20, 1856 ("Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. “)

November 4, 1853 ("Hear a nuthatch.")

November 4, 1855 (“The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter”)

November 7, 1855 ("See a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights.”)

November 7, 1858 ("The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up.")

November 7, 1858 ("The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain. But just then I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter.")

November 16, 1860 (“In my two walks I saw only one squirrel and a chickadee. Not a hawk or a jay.”)

November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . . I hear the hooting of an owl . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound.")

November 18, 1855 (I am prepared to hear sharp, screaming notes rending the air, from the winter birds."")

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 22, 1860 ("...and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him.”)
November 25, 1857 ("Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse")

November 28, 1858 ("More small birds —tree sparrows and chickadees — than usual about the house.")

November 29, 1860 (“Get up my boat, 7 a. m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river.”)

November 30, 1855 (“Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day. ”

December 1, 1853 ("I hear their faint, silvery, lisping notes, like tinkling glass, and occasionally a sprightly day-day-day, as they inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”)

December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear [the nuthatch] on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here * [but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59")
December 2, 1854 (“Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.”)

December 2, 1856 (“Got in my boat . . . It made me sweat to wheel it home through the snow”)

December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits.")

December 5, 1853 ("Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow”

December 10, 1859 (“Get in my boat, in the snow. The bottom is coated with a glaze.”)

December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day. . . .I hear rarely a bird except the chickadee, or perchance a jay or crow.")

December 13, 1852 ("I observed a mouse . . . reddish brown above and cream-colored beneath,. . .. I think it must be the Gerbillus Canadensis, or perhaps the Arvicola Emmonsii, or maybe the Arvicola hirsutus, meadow mouse")

December 13, 1852 (“I judge from his account of the rise and fall of Flint's Pond that, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlet, it sympathizes with Walden")

December 27, 1853 (“ I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice")

January 22, 1852 ("I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. . . Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last?”)

January 29, 1853 ("I saw a little grayish mouse frozen into Walden, three or four rods from the shore, its tail sticking out a hole. It had apparently run into this hole when full of water, as if on land, and been drowned and frozen.")

February 9, 1858 (“A distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.”) 

February 24, 1854 ("Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”)

November 26, 2017

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.

  April 7, 1853 

November 25 <<<<<<<<  November 26.  >>>>>>>> November 27

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 26

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

The satisfaction of existence.

November 25

I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. 

November 25, 2017

I would fain forget all my morning's occupation, my obligations to society. But some times it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village; the thought of some work, some surveying, will run in my head, and I am not where my body is, I am out of my senses.

In my walks I would return to my senses like a bird or a beast.

What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

This afternoon, late and cold as it is, has been a sort of Indian summer. Indeed, I think that we have summer days from time to time the winter through, and that it is often the snow on the ground makes the whole difference.

This afternoon the air was indescribably clear and exhilarating, and though the thermometer would have shown it to be cold, I thought that there was a finer and purer warmth than in summer; a wholesome, intellectual warmth, in which the body was warmed by the mind's contentment. The warmth was hardly sensuous, but rather the satisfaction of existence.


I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over, though the stones which I threw down on it from the high bank on the east broke through.Yet the river was open.

The landscape looked singularly clean and pure and dry, the air, like a pure glass, being laid over the picture, the trees so tidy, stripped of their leaves; the meadows and pastures, clothed with clean dry grass, looked as if they had been swept; ice on the water and winter in the air, but yet not a particle of snow on the ground.

The woods, divested in great part of their leaves, are being ventilated.

It is the season of perfect works, of hard, tough, ripe twigs, not of tender buds and leaves. The leaves have made their wood, and a myriad new withes stand up all around pointing to the sky, able to survive the cold.

It is only the perennial that you see, the iron age of the year.

These expansions of the river skim over before the river itself takes on its icy fetters. What is the analogy?



I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice. He is a man wilder than Ray or Melvin. While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of a man, that is all.

He would dive when I went nearer, then reappear again, and had kept open a place five or six feet square so that it had not frozen, by swimming about in it. Then he would sit on the edge of the ice and busy himself about something, I could not see whether it was a clam or not.

What a cold blooded fellow! thoughts at a low temperature, sitting perfectly still so long on ice covered with water, mumbling a cold, wet clam in its shell. What safe, low, moderate thoughts it must have! It does not get on to stilts.

The generations of muskrats do not fail. They are not preserved by the legislature of Massachusetts.


Boats are drawn up high which will not be launched again till spring.


There is a beautiful fine wild grass which grows in the path in sprout land, now dry, white, and waving, in light beds soft to the touch.

I experience such an interior comfort, far removed from the sense of cold, as if the thin atmosphere were rarefied by heat, were the medium of invisible flames, as if the whole landscape were one great hearthside, that where the shrub oak leaves rustle on the hillside, I seem to hear a crackling fire and see the pure flame, and I wonder that the dry leaves do not blaze into yellow flames.

I find but little change yet on the south side of the Cliffs; only the leaves of the wild apple are a little frostbitten on their edges and curled dry there, but some wild cherry leaves and blueberries are still fresh and tender green and red, as well as all the other leaves and plants which I noticed there the other day.

When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting like an Indian-summer sun. There was a purple tint in the horizon. It was warm on the face of the rocks, and I could have sat till the sun disappeared, to dream there. It was a mild sunset such as is to be attended to. 

November 25, 2021

Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 25, 1850

What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? See Walking (“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. … But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is. I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” ); August 21, 1851 ("A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed."); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them.. . .A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); January 7, 1857 ("I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day. . . .and therefore I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified.");September 13, 1859 ("Few live so far outdoors as to hear the first geese go over."); February 12, 1860 ("Surrounded by our thoughts or imaginary objects, living in our ideas, not one in a million ever sees the objects which are actually around him."); March 1, 1860 ("I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down.") See also December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset "); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. . . .. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”)

I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over, . . . Yet the river was open. . . .Boats are drawn up high which will not be launched again till spring See November 18, 1858 ("Am surprised to see Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over during the last four days. It will probably open again."); November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find the river skimmed over in some places, and Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over, though commonly there is scarcely any ice to be observed along the shores."); November 23, 1852 ("I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over"); November 24, 1858 ("Fair Haven Pond is closed still ");. November 26, 1855 ("The ice next the shore bears me and my boat"); November 26, 1857 ("Got my boat up this afternoon. (It is Thanksgiving Day.) One end had frozen in"):November 26, 1858 ("Got in boat on account of Reynolds’s new fence going up (earlier than usual)."); November 29, 1860 ("Get up my boat, 7 a. m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river."); November 30, 1855 ("River skimmed over behind Dodd’s and elsewhere. Got in my boat. River remained iced over all day."); November 30, 1858 ("The river may be said to have frozen generally last night.")
.

When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting . . . and I could have sat till the sun disappeared.  See November 25, 1851 ("the sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, a thick snow-storm were gathering, which, as we had faced the west, we were not prepared for; yet the air was clear."); November 25, 1857 ("I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set. Methinks the air is dusky soon after four these days. . . . There is the sun a quarter of an hour high, shining on it through a perfectly clear sky, but to my eye it is singularly dark or dusky. And now the sun has disappeared"); November 27, 1853 ("The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk."); November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.") See also December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”) June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); August 14, 1854 ("I have come forth to this hill at sunset. . . to behold and commune with something grander than man.”)

The satisfaction of existence . . . our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us. SeeJune 22, 1851 ("Sometimes we are clarified and calmed . . ., so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to our selves . All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps . . . . We live and rejoice . . . I feel my Maker blessing me."); July 16, 1851 (" My life was ecstasy. In youth,. . .I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction;. . .To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes! I can remember how I was astonished. I said to myself, — I said to others, — "There comes into my mind such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion, and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that I am dealt with by superior powers. This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself. . . .. The maker of me is improving me."); August 5, 1851 ("As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment. ... I am sobered by the moonlight. I bethink myself.”); August 23, 1852 ("There is something invigorating in this air, which I am peculiarly sensible is a real wind blowing from over the surface of a planet.”);December 11, 1855 ("To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired. My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.”) March 30, 1853 ("Ah, those youthful days! are they never to return? when the walker . . . sees, hears, scents, tastes, and feels only himself, - the phenomena that show themselves in him, - his expanding body, his intellect and heart.”)

This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence that I have not procured myself. See May 23, 1854("There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. I sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music . . .. When I walked with a joy which knew not its own origin.")

A Book of the Seasons: November 24 (lichens contrast with first slight snow, geese migrating , the Andromeda phenomenon, cold Thanksgiving weather, acorns , last flower, winter begins)

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 24.

Snow sugars the ground

to reveal a cow-path in

the distant landscape.

November 24, 1858

Looking from the sun

the andromeda is a 

 uniform pale brown.

November 24, 1857

Looking toward the sun,

the andromeda is a

very warm red brown.

November 24, 1857

Clear and freezing cold 

with a strong northerly wind – 

the winter begins.

November 24, 1853

November 24, 2020

At this time last year the andromeda in the Ministerial Swamp was red. Now it has not turned from brown. November 24, 1852

Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. November 24, 1857

The first or northernmost Andromeda Pond. . . is filled with a uniformly dense and level bed of brown andromeda, in which I detect nothing else from the hills except some white cotton-grass waving over it.  November 24, 1857

Between the andromeda and the hills, there is a border, from one to two rods wide, of coarse and now yellowish sedge all the way round, November 24, 1857

On the dry hillside next the water, there is another belt, i.e. of lambkill, pretty dense, running apparently quite round the pond a rod or more in width. . .  here it is a thick growth and has relation to the swamp. November 24, 1857

Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering. November 24, 1855

The last three or four days have been quite cold, the sidewalks a glare of ice and very little melting. November 24, 1855

To-day has been exceedingly blustering and disagreeable, as I found while surveying. November 24, 1855

At noon, after a drizzling forenoon, the weather suddenly changes to clear and wintry, freezing cold with strong wind from a northerly quarter. November 24, 1853

Cold Thanksgiving weather again, the pools freezing. November 24, 1857

There is a slight sugaring of snow on the ground. November 24, 1858

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was. Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, November 24, 1858

That first slight snow has not yet gone off! and very little has been added. November 24, 1855

On grass ground there is much the less, and that is barely perceptible, while plowed ground is quite white, and I can thus distinguish such fields even to the horizon. November 24, 1858

The plowed fields were for a short time whitened. November 24, 1860

I can not only distinguish plowed fields — regular white squares in the midst of russet — but even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long, as I look across to Conantum. November 24, 1858 

It is pleasant to see thus revealed as a feature, even in the distant landscape, a cow-path leading from far inland down to the river. November 24, 1858

It is dark, drizzling still from time to time, sprinkling or snowing a little. I see more snow in the north and north west horizon November 24, 1858

It is a lichen day, with a little moist snow falling. November 24, 1858

The first spitting of snow — a flurry or squall – from out a gray or slate-colored cloud that came up from the west. November 24, 1860

This consisted almost entirely of pellets an eighth of an inch or less in diameter. November 24, 1860

These drove along almost horizontally, or curving upward like the outline of a breaker, before the strong and chilling wind. November 24, 1860

The hands seek the warmth of the pockets, and fingers are so benumbed that you cannot open your jack-knife. November 24, 1860

The air was so filled with these snow pellets that we could not not see a hill half a mile off for an hour. November 24, 1860

The green moss about the bases of trees was very prettily spotted white with them, and also the large beds of cladonia in the pastures. November 24, 1860

The great green lungwort lichen shows now on the oaks  . . . and the fresh bright chestnut fruit of other kinds, glistening with moisture, brings life and immortality to light. November 24, 1858 

That side of the trunk on which the lichens are thickest is the side on which the snow lodges in long ridges. November 24, 1858

They come to contrast with the red cockspur lichens on the stumps, which you had not noticed before. November 24, 1860

Striking against the trunks of the trees on the west side they fell and accumulated in a white line at the base. November 24, 1860

Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. November 24, 1860

The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you. November 24, 1860

Ice forms in my boat at 5 p. m., and what was mud in the street is fast becoming a rigid roughness. November 24, 1853

Ice has frozen pretty thick in the bottom of my boat. November 24, 1855

Fair Haven Pond is closed still. November 24, 1858

It seems like the beginning of winter. November 24, 1853

The farmers now bring the apples they have engaged (and the cider); it is time to put them in the cellar, and the turnips. November 24, 1855

Under the two white oaks by the second wall south east of my house, on the east side the wall, I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, though everyone is sprouted, — frequently . . .with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth. November 24, 1860

But many have had their radicle broken or eaten off, and many have it now dead and withered. November 24, 1860

So far as my observation goes there, by far the greatest number of white oak acorns were destroyed by decaying (whether in consequence of frost or wet), both before and soon after falling. November 24, 1860

Not nearly so many have been carried off by squirrels and birds or consumed by grubs, though the number of acorns of all kinds lying under the trees is now comparatively small to what it was early in October. November 24, 1860

It is remarkable that all sound white oak acorns (and many which are not now sound) are sprouted, and that I have noticed no other kind sprouted. November 24, 1860

It will be worth the while to see how many of these sprouted acorns are left and are sound in the spring. November 24, 1860

It is true these two trees are exceptions and I do not find sound ones nearly as numerous under others. Nevertheless, the sound white oak acorns are not so generally and entirely picked up as I supposed. November 24, 1860

The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. November 24, 1860

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home. November 24, 1858

The Fringilla hyemalis appear to be flitting about in a more lively manner on account of the cold. They go off with a twitter from the low weeds and bushes November 24, 1857

See, on the railroad-slope by the pond, and also some days ago, a flock of goldfinches eating the seed of the Roman wormwood. November 24, 1859

Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes. November 24, 1857

Setting stakes in the swamp (Ministerial). Saw seven black ducks fly out of the peat-hole. November 24, 1851

Saw there also a tortoise still stirring, the painted tortoise, I believe. November 24, 1851 

Found on the south side of the swamp the Lygodium palmatum, which Bigelow calls the only climbing fern in our latitude, an evergreen November 24, 1851

The Rubus hispidus is now very common and conspicuous amid the withered grass and leaves of the swamp, with its green or reddened leaves. November 24, 1858

How pretty amid the downy and cottony fruits of November the heads of the white anemone. November 24, 1859

At Spanish Brook Path, the witch-hazel (one flower) lingers.  November 24, 1859

November 24, 2016

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda phenomenon

((Andromeda polifolia — bog-rosemary)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens and the lichenst studying lichens.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch

  A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Ice

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  First Snow

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November days

November 24, 2018

March 2, 1858 (“ the snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black.”)

March 12, 1859 ("See two ducks flying over Ministerial Swamp.")

April 29, 1857 ("Sweet-fern at entrance of Ministerial Swamp.")

May 1, 1859 ("The climbing fern is persistent, i.e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.") ;

May 19, 1860 (“At the Ministerial Swamp I see a white lady's-slipper almost out, fully grown, with red ones.”)

June 2, 1860 ("I soon hear its mournful scream. . . not loud now but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off.”);

June 25, 1860 ("At evening up the Assabet hear four or five screech owls on different sides of the river, uttering those peculiar low screwing or working, ventriloquial sounds.”)

July 7, 1854 ("See a pretty large hawk. . . circling over the Ministerial Swamp.")

August 14, 1854 (“I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods.”)

August 28, 1860 (" The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.")

September 23, 1855 (" I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe’s house this bright moonlight night, — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt perchance, a rapid trill, then subdued or smothered a note or two.”)

September 24, 1855 ("See coming from the south in loose array some twenty apparently black ducks, . . .At first they were in form like a flock of blackbirds, then for a moment assumed the outline of a fluctuating harrow. ); 

September 29, 1851 ("Scared up three black ducks, which rose with a great noise of their wings, striking the water. ");

 September 30, 1853 ("Saw a large flock of black ducks flying northwest in the form of a harrow."); 

October 2, 1859 (“The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns.”);

October 7, 1860 ("I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. . . . Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted.”);

October 8, 1860 ("I find a great many white oak acorns already sprouted, although they are but half fallen, and can easily believe that they sometimes sprout before they fall. It is a good year for them.")

October 11, 1860 ("There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall.");

October 13, 1860 ("This is a white oak year")

October 14, 1856 (“[F]inger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets”); 
October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”)

October 20, 1859 (“It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket.”)
October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum,. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”);
October 29, 1860 ("At some of the white oaks visited on the 11th, where the acorns were so thick on the ground and trees, I now find them perhaps nearly half picked up, yet perhaps little more than two thirds spoiled. The good appear to be all sprouted now.")

November 3, 1852 ("At Andromeda Pond, started nine black (?) ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me.")
November 3, 1853 (" I think it was the 27th October I saw a goldfinch. ")

November 4, 1855 ("See some large flocks of F. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach.”)
November 6, 1853 ("It is surprising how little most of us are contented to know about the sparrows which drift about in the air before us just before the first snows. These little sparrows with white in tail, perhaps the prevailing bird of late, have flitted before me so many falls and springs, yet they have been strangers to me. I have not inquired whence they came or whither they were going,")

November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.")

November 8, 1853 (“Our first snow,. . . The children greet it with a shout when they come out at recess. ”)

November 8, 1858 ("Lichens . . .are the various grays and browns which give November its character.")
November 11, 1851 ("In the withered grass at Nut Meadow Brook, two black ducks, . . .rise black between me and the sun, but, when they have circled round to the east, show some silvery sheen on the under side of their wings. ")
November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”)
November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight . . .I wear mittens now.”)
; November 11, 1858 (“Coming home I have cold fingers, and must row to get warm.”)

November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)
November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon.“);

November 14, 1851 ("Surveying the Ministerial Lot in the southwestern part of the town.")

November 14, 1855 ("A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.")
November 15, 1859 (“About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling. They were collected in great numbers on the very tops of these trees and flitting from one to another. Rice has since described to me the same phenomenon ”)

November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold.”) 

November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon.“)

November 13, 1851 ("A day when you cannot pluck a flower, cannot dig a parsnip, nor pull a turnip, for the frozen ground! What do the thoughts find to live on?")

 November 14, 1855 ("Mr. Rice . . . remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over, when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way ")

 November 15, 1853 ("Take up a witch-hazel with still some fresh blossoms.")
November 15, 1858 ("I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up. The end of last month and the first part of this is the time.")

 November 16, 1858  ("Rubus hispidus leaves last through the winter, turning reddish.")

 November 17 1856 ("Winter is not all white and sere. . . . a few evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still") 

November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”)

November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night, but the ground was not at all frozen or prepared for it. A little greener grass and stubble here and there seems to burn its way through it this forenoon.");

November 18,1851 ("Surveying these days the Ministerial Lot . . .I hear the hooting of an owl . . . Here hawks also circle by day, and chickadees are heard, and rabbits and partridges abound.")
November 18, 1858 ("I go along under the east side of Lee’s Cliff, looking at the evergreen ferns.")

November 20, 1857 ("I enter the Ministerial Swamp at the road below Tarbell’s. The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees. In some places where many of the bright-crimson shoots of high blueberry are seen together, they have a very pretty effect")

November 20, 1858  ("Tthe Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen.")
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, 1860 ("Decidedly finger cold tonight.")

November 21, 1860 ("Another finger-cold evening, which I improve in pulling my turnips”)

November 22, 1853 (“Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also.”)

November 22, 1860 ("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 23, 1850 ("To-day it has been finger-cold. Unexpectedly I found ice by the side of the brooks this afternoon nearly an inch thick. Prudent people get in their barrels of apples to-day. ")

 November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.")

November 23, 1853 ("At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, . . . This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th , i . e . within a week .")

 November 23, 1852 ("I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over.")

November 25, 1850 ("I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over, though the stones which I threw down on it from the high bank on the east broke through. Yet the river was open.")

November 25, 1857("This is November of the hardest kind, — bare frozen ground covered with pale-brown or straw-colored herbage, a strong, cold, cutting northwest wind which makes me seek to cover my ears, a perfectly clear and cloudless sky. . . . Ditches and pools are fast skimming over, and a few slate-colored snowbirds, with thick, shuffling twitter, and fine-chipping tree sparrows flit from bush to bush in the other wise deserted pastures. This month taxes a walker's resources more than any.")

November 25, 1852 ("At Walden. — I hear at sundown what I mistake for the squawking of a hen. . . but it proved to be a flock of wild geese going south")

November 27, 1856 ("Take a turn down the river. A painted tortoise sinking to the bottom, and apparently tree sparrows along the shore")

November 27, 1852 (“I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall.”)
November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow I have seen, ")

November 30, 1851 ("The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods, etc., etc")

November 30, 1853 ("Now, first since spring, I take notice of the cladonia lichens")

December 2, 1854 ("Got up my boat and housed it, ice having formed about it.”)

December 2, 1857 ("Measuring Little Goose Pond, I observed two painted tortoises moving about under the thin transparent ice"); 

December 3, 1852 (" In a ditch near by, under ice half an inch thick, I saw a painted tortoise moving about.") 

December 8, 1850 ("The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!”)

December 9, 1852 ("A few petals of the witch-hazel still hold on")

 December 21, 1851 (“As I stand by the edge of the swamp (Ministerial), a heavy-winged hawk flies home to it at sundown, just over my head, in silence.”);

December 13, 1857 ("I go this afternoon thinking I may find the stakes set for auction lots on the Ministerial Lot in December, '51")

December 14, 1859 (Snow-storms might be classified. . . .Also there is the pellet or shot snow, which consists of little dry spherical pellets the size of robin-shot. This, I think, belongs to cold weather.")

December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.")

December 22, 1858 ("I see in the cut near the shanty-site quite a flock of F. hyemalis and goldfinches together, on the snow and weeds and ground.")

December 23, 1850 ("I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when the ground is covered with snow than when it is bare")

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.”)

December 26, 1853 ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig”)

 December 26, 1855 ("The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, seen glowing through the more opaque whitish or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, the richest sight of all ”)

December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”)

January 5, 1860 ("I see where a flock of goldfinches in the morning had settled on a hemlock's top, by the snow strewn with scales, literally blackened or darkened with them for a rod.")

January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”)
January 10,1855 ("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”).

January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”)

January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”) 

January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”)

January 30, 1856 ("It has just begun to snow, — those little round dry pellets like shot. Stops snowing before noon, not having amounted to anything.”)

February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”)

February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.) It is quite distinct in many places where you would not have noticed it before. A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto-relievo.”)

November 24, 2020

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.

  April 7, 1853 

November 23 <<<<<<<<  November 24  >>>>>>>> November 25

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 24

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

;

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