I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days.

November 8

The dark spruce tree at Sherman's; its vicinity the site for a house.

Ah, those sun-sparkles on Dudley Pond in this November air! what a heaven to live in! Intensely brilliant, as no artificial light I have seen, like a dance of diamonds. Coarse mazes of a diamond dance seen through the trees.

All objects shine to-day, even the sportsmen seen at a distance, as if a cavern were unroofed, and its crystals gave entertainment to the sun. This great see saw of brilliants, the åvýpionov yélaoua.

You look several inches into the sod.

The cedarn hills.

The squirrels that run across the road sport their tails like banners.

The gray squirrels in their cylinders are set out in the sun.

When I saw the bare sand at Cochituate I felt my relation to the soil.
These are my sands not yet run out. Not yet will the fates turn the glass. This air have I title to taint with my decay. In this clean sand my bones will gladly lie. 

Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. Here ever springing, never dying, with perennial root I stand; for the winter of the land is warm to me. While the flowers bloom again as in the spring, shall I pine? When I see her sands exposed, thrown up from beneath the surface, it touches me inwardly, it reminds me of my origin; for I am such a plant, so native to New England, me thinks, as springs from the sand cast up from below.

I find ice under the north side of woods nearly an inch thick, where the acorns are frozen in, which have dropped from the overhanging oaks and been saved from the squirrels, perchance by the water.

W. E. C. says he found a ripe strawberry last week in Berkshire.

Saw a frog at the Swamp Bridge on back road.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , November 8, 1851

Ah, those sun-sparkles on Dudley Pond. See November 7, 1851 ("Returned by the south side of Dudley Pond.")

When I saw the bare sand at Cochituate I felt my relation to the soil. See November 7, 1851 ("Cochituate. . . .The glorious sandy banks far and near, caving and sliding, — far sandy slopes, the forts of the land, where you see the naked flesh of New England, . . .Dear to me to lie in, this sand; fit to preserve the bones of a race for thousands of years to come. And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander.")

Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. See November 7, 1851 ("The mayflower leaves we saw there, and the Viola pedata in blossom.") See also September 8, 1851 ("Plants commonly soon cease to grow for the year, unless they may have a fall growth, which is a kind of second spring. In the feelings of the man, too, the year is already past, and he looks forward to the coming winter.  His occasional rejuvenescence and faith in the current time is like the aftermath, a scanty crop. . . .It is a season of withering, of dust and heat, a season of small fruits and trivial experiences.  . . . But there is an aftermath in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom again, followed by an Indian summer of finer atmosphere and of a pensive beauty.  May my life be not destitute of its Indian summer, a season of fine and clear, mild weather in which I may prolong my hunting before the winter comes,");  September 28, 1852 (" I find the hood-leaved violet quite abundant in a meadow, and the pedata in the Boulder Field . . . This is the commencement, then, of the second spring");  October 22, 1859 ("In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us"); October 23, 1853 ("The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. "); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”)

The simple peep peep of the peetweet.

May 8

A cloudy day. 

The small pewee, how long. 

The night-warbler's note. 

River four and seven eighths inches below summer level. 

Stone-heaps, how long? 

I see a woodchuck in the middle of the field at Assabet Bath. He is a  heavy fellow with a black tip to his tail, poking about almost on his belly, — where there is but little greenness yet, — with a great heavy head. He is very wary, every minute pausing and raising his head, and sometimes sitting erect and looking around. He is evidently nibbling some green thing, maybe clover. He runs at last, with an undulating motion, jerking his lumbering body along, and then stops when near a hole. But on the whole he runs and stops and looks round very much like a cat in the fields. 

The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it. 

The simple peep peep of the peetweet, as it flies away from the shore before me, sounds hollow and rather mournful, reminding me of the seashore and its wrecks, and when I smell the fresh odor of our marshes the resemblance is increased. 

How the marsh hawk circles or skims low, round and round over a particular place in a meadow, where, perhaps, it has seen a frog, screaming once or twice, and then alights on a fence-post! How it crosses the causeway between the willows, at a gap in them with which it is familiar, as a hen knows a hole in a fence! I lately saw one flying over the road near our house. 

I see a gray squirrel ascend the dead aspen at the rock, and enter a hole some eighteen feet up it. Just below this, a crack is stuffed with leaves which project. Probably it has a nest within and has filled up this crack. 

Now that the river is so low, the bared bank, often within the button-bushes, is seen to be covered with that fine, short, always green Eleocharis acicularis (?).

C. has seen a brown thrasher and a republican swallow to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1860


The small pewee, how long. See May 7, 1852 (" The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet — a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the “Small Pewee"

The night-warbler's note. See May 8, 1852 ("The night-warbler while it is yet pretty light.");  May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”);  According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” Probably the flight song of the oven-bird. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Oven-bird.

Stone-heaps, how long? See May 4, 1858 ("I asked [a fisherman] if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel.”) May 8, 1858 ("Mr. Wright . . ., an old fisherman, remembers the lamprey eels well, which he used to see in the Assabet there, but thinks that there have been none in the river for a dozen years and that the stone-heaps are not made by them. "); May 12, 1858 ("George, the carpenter, says that he used to see a great many stone-heaps in the Saco in Bartlett, near the White Mountains, like those in the Assabet, and that there were no lampreys there and they called them “snake-heaps.”); July 31, 1859 ("A man fishing at the Ox-Bow said without hesitation that the stone-heaps were made by the sucker, at any rate that he had seen them made by the sucker in Charles River,")

The cinquefoil is closed in a cloudy day, and when the sun shines it is turned toward it. See May 2, 1860 ("The early potentillas are now quite abundant."); May 17, 1853 ("The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yellow. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. ")

The simple peep peep of the peetweet, as it flies away from the shore before me, sounds hollow and rather mournful. See May 2, 1859 ("The river seems really inhabited when the peetweet is back . . ... This bird does not return to our stream until the weather is decidedly pleasant and warm. . . .Its note peoples the river, like the prattle of children once more in the yard of a house that has stood empty."); May 4, 1856 (“As soon as the rocks begin to be bare the peetweet comes and is seen teetering on them and skimming away from me.”)

How the marsh hawk circles or skims low, round and round over a particular place in a meadow. See May 2, 1855 ("Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath"); May 2, 1858 (" How patiently they skim the meadows, occasionally alighting, and fluttering "); May 14, 1855 (" See a male hen-harrier skimming low along the side of the river, often within a foot of the muddy shore, . . .Occasionally he alights and walks or hops flutteringly a foot or two over the ground")

 C. has seen a brown thrasher and a republican swallow to-day. See  May 7, 1852 ("Beginning, I may say, with robins, song sparrows, chip-birds, bluebirds, etc., I walk through larks, pewees, pigeon woodpeckers, chickadees, towhees, huckleberry-birds, wood thrushes, brown thrasher, jay, catbird, ");May 8, 1857  ("The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water")

No wonder that they are never made dizzy by high climbing, that were born in the top of a tree.

April 25.

April 25, 2020

A cold day, so that the people you meet remark upon it, yet the thermometer is 47° at 2 P. M. We should not have remarked upon it in March. It is cold for April, being windy withal. 

I fix a stake on the west side the willows at my boat‘s place, the top of which is at summer level and is about ten and a half inches below the stone wharf there. The river is one and one fourth inches above summer level to-day. That rock northwest of the boat‘s place is about fifteen inches (the top of it) below summer level. Heron Rock top (just above the junction of the rivers) is thirteen inches above summer level. I judge by my eye that the rock on the north side, where the first bridge crossed the river, is about four inches lower than the last.

Mr. Stewart tells me that he has found a gray squirrel‘s nest up the Assabet, in a maple tree. I resolve that I too will find it. 

I do not know within less than a quarter of a mile where to look, nor whether it is in a hollow tree, or in a nest of leaves. I examine the shore first and find where he landed. I then examine the maples in that neighborhood to see what one has been climbed. I soon find one the bark of which has been lately rubbed by the boots of a climber, and, looking up, see a nest. 

It was a large nest made of maple twigs, with a centre of leaves, lined with finer, about twenty feet from the ground, against the leading stem of a large red maple. I noticed no particular entrance. 

When I put in my hand from above and felt the young, they uttered a dull croak-like squeak, and one clung fast to my hand when I took it out through the leaves and twigs with which it was covered. It was yet blind, and could not have been many days old, yet it instinctively clung to my hand with its little claws, as if it knew that there was danger of its falling from a height to the ground which it never saw. The idea of clinging was strongly planted in it.

There was quite a depth of loose sticks, maple twigs, piled on the top of the nest. No wonder that they become skillful climbers who are born high above the ground and begin their lives in a tree, having first of all to descend to reach the earth. They are cradled in a tree-top, in but a loose basket, in helpless infancy, and there slumber when their mother is away. No wonder that they are never made dizzy by high climbing, that were born in the top of a tree, and learn to cling fast to the tree before their eyes are open.

On my way to the Great Meadows I see boys a-fishing, with perch and bream on their string, apparently having good luck, the river is so low. 

The river appears the lower, because now, before the weeds and grass have grown, we can see by the bare shore of mud or sand and the rocks how low it is. At midsummer we might imagine water at the base of the grass where there was none.

I hear the greatest concerts of blackbirds, – red wings and crow blackbirds nowadays, especially of the former (also the 22d and 29th). The maples and willows along the river, and the button-bushes, are all alive with them. They look like a black fruit on the trees, distributed over the top at pretty equal distances.

It is worthwhile to see how slyly they hide at the base of the thick and shaggy button-bushes at this stage of the water. They will suddenly cease their strains and flit away and secrete themselves low amid these bushes till you are past; or you scare up an unexpectedly large flock from such a place, where you had seen none. 

I pass a large quire in full blast on the oaks, etc., on the island in the meadow northwest of Peter‘s. Suddenly they are hushed, and I hear the loud rippling rush made by their wings as they dash away, and, looking up, I see what I take to be a sharp-shinned hawk just alighting on the trees where they were, having failed to catch one. They retreat some forty rods off, to another tree, and renew their concert there. 

The hawk plumes himself, and then flies off, rising gradually and beginning to circle, and soon it joins its mate, and soars with it high in the sky and out of sight, as if the thought of so terrestrial a thing as a blackbird had never entered its head. 

It appeared to have a plain reddish-fawn breast. The size more than anything made me think it a sharp-shin.

When looking into holes in trees to find the squirrel‘s nest, I found a pout partly dried, with its tail gone, in one maple, about a foot above the ground. This was probably left there by a mink. 

Minott says that, being at work in his garden once, he saw a mink coming up from the brook with a pout in her mouth, half-way across his land. The mink, observing him, dropped her pout and stretched up her head, looking warily around, then, taking up the pout again, went onward and went under a rock in the wall by the roadside. He looked there and found the young in their nest, — so young that they were all “red” yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 25, 1860

Mr. Stewart tells me that he has found a gray squirrel‘s nest up the Assabet, in a maple tree. See note to June 1, 1860 ("Young Stewart tells me that when he visited again that gray squirrel's nest which I described about one month ago up the Assabet, the squirrels were gone, and he thought that the old ones had moved them, for he saw the old about another nest. . . .This makes three gray squirrels' nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees. ")

They look like a black fruit on the trees, distributed over the top at pretty equal distances. See March 16, 1860 ("They cover the apple trees like a black fruit."); April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling, — all for some purpose; what is it? ”)


Looking up, I see what I take to be a sharp-shinned hawk. See  April 27, 1860 ("I saw yesterday, and see to-day, a small hawk which I take to be a pigeon hawk. This one skims low along over Grindstone Meadow, close to the edge of the water, and I see the blackbirds rise hurriedly from the buttonbushes and willows before him.") and note to July 21, 1858 ("It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Sharp-shinned Hawk.

Minott says that, being at work in his garden once, he saw a mink coming up from the brook with a pout in her mouth. See note to April 15, 1858 ("I looked round and saw a mink under the bushes within a few feet.")

What a bountiful supply of winter food.

January 20. 

2 P. M. — 39°. Up Assabet. 

The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. 

Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual, and perching close by boldly; then, descending to the snow and ice, I see them pick up the hemlock seed which lies all around them. Occasionally they take one to a twig and hammer at it there under their claws, perhaps to separate it from the wing, or even the shell. 

The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter. The snow along the sides of the river is also all dusted over with birch and alder seed, and I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. 

At R.W.E.'s red oak I see a gray squirrel, which has been looking after acorns there, run across the river. The half-inch snow of yesterday morning shows its tracks plainly. They are much larger and more like a rabbit's than I expected.   The squirrel runs in an undulating manner, though it is a succession of low leaps of from two and a half to three feet. Each four tracks occupy a space some six or seven inches long. Each foot-track is very distinct, showing the toes and protuberances of the foot, and is from an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters long. The clear interval between the hind and fore feet is four to five inches. The fore feet are from one and a half to three inches apart in the clear; the hind, one to two inches apart. 

I see that what is probably the track of the same squirrel near by is sometimes in the horseshoe form, i. e., when its feet are all brought close together:  the open side still forward. I must have often mistaken this for a rabbit. But is not the bottom of the rabbit's foot so hairy that I should never see these distinct marks or protuberances? 

This squirrel ran up a maple till he got to where the stem was but little bigger than his body, and then, getting behind the gray-barked stem, which was almost exactly the color of its body, it clasped it with its fore feet and there hung motionless with the end of its tail blowing in the wind. As I moved, it steadily edged round so as to keep the maples always between me and it, and I only saw its tail, the sides of its body projecting, and its little paws clasping the tree. It remained otherwise perfectly still as long as I was thereabouts, or five or ten minutes. There was a leafy nest in the tree.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 20, 1860

The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! See December 31, 1859 ("There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), . . .and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also. Some of the seeds have blown at least fifteen rods southeast. So the hemlock seed is important to some birds in the winter.")

Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual. See October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.");  October 17, 1856 ("I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge.");  October 23, 1852 ("The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.");. November 9, 1850 ("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"); 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 3, 1856 ("they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you."); December 28, 1858 ("I notice a few chickadees there in the edge of the pines, in the sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one another, with a reference to me, I think."); January 30, 1854 ("As we walk up the river, a little flock of chickadees flies to us from a wood-side fifteen rods off, and utters their lively day day day, and follows us along a considerable distance, flitting by our side on the button-bushes and willows. It is the most, if not the only, sociable bird we have.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. See January 20, 1855 ("Our lesser redpoll . . . I heard its mew about the house early this morning before sunrise . . . I see the tracks of countless little birds, probably redpolls, where these have run over broad pastures and visited every weed"); See also January 19, 1855 ("At noon it is still a driving snow-storm, and a little flock of redpolls is busily picking the seeds of the pig weed in the garden. Almost all have more or less crimson; a few are very splendid, with their particularly bright crimson breasts. The white on the edge of their wing-coverts is very conspicuous. "); January 24, 1860 ("See a large flock of lesser redpolls, eating the seeds of the birch (and perhaps alder) in Dennis Swamp by railroad. They are distinct enough from the goldfinch, their note more shelly and general as they fly, and they are whiter, without the black wings, beside that some have the crimson head or head and breast. They alight on the birches, then swarm on the snow beneath, busily picking up the seed in the copse. "); January 27, 1860 ("Half a dozen redpolls busily picking the seeds out of the larch cones behind Monroe's."); January 29, 1860 ("To-day I see quite a flock of the lesser redpolls eating the seeds of the alder, picking them out of the cones just as they do the larch, often head downward; and I see, under the alders, where they have run and picked up the fallen seeds, making chain-like tracks, two parallel lines.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Lesser Redpoll

My eye rested with pleasure on the white pines.

November 30

A cold afternoon

windy with some snow not yet

melted on the ground.

My eye wanders as

I sit on an oak stump by

an old cellar-hole.

Where is my home now?

Faint as an old cellar hole,

 is where we have lived.

Methinks that in my 

mood I am asking Nature 

to give me a sign.

Transient gladness.

I do not know what it is –

something that I see:

A recognition

from white pines now reflecting

a silvery light.

And by the old site

I sit on the stump of an

oak which once grew here.

November 30, 2016

Sunday. 

A rather cold and windy afternoon, with some snow not yet melted on the ground. 

Under the south side of the hill between Brown's and Tarbell's, in a warm nook, disturbed three large gray squirrels and some partridges, who had all sought out this bare and warm place. While the squirrels hid themselves in the tree-tops, I sat on an oak stump by an old cellar-hole and mused. 

This squirrel is always an unexpectedly large animal to see frisking about. 

My eye wanders across the valley to the pine woods which fringe the opposite side, and in their aspect my eye finds something which addresses itself to my nature. 

Methinks that in my mood I was asking Nature to give me a sign. 

I do not know exactly what it was that attracted my eye. I experienced a transient gladness, at any rate, at something which I saw. 

I am sure that my eye rested with pleasure on the white pines, now reflecting a silvery light, the infinite stories of their boughs, tier above tier, a sort of basaltic structure, a crumbling precipice of pine horizontally stratified. Each pine is like a great green feather stuck in the ground. A myriad white pine boughs extend themselves horizontally, one above and behind another, each bearing its burden of silvery sunlight, with darker seams between them, as if it were a great crumbling piny precipice thus stratified. 

On this my eyes pastured, while the squirrels were up the trees behind me. That, at any rate, it was that I got by my afternoon walk, a certain recognition from the pine, some congratulation. 

Where is my home? It is indistinct as an old cellar-hole, now a faint indentation merely in a farmer's field, which he has plowed into and rounded off its edges years ago, and I sit by the old site on the stump of an oak which once grew there. 

Such is the nature where we have lived. 

Thick birch groves stand here and there, dark brown (?) now with white lines more or less distinct. 

The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods, etc., etc.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1851

My eye rested with pleasure on the white pines, now reflecting a silvery light. See November 11, 1851 ("There is a cold, silvery light on the white pines as I go through J.P. Brown's field near Jenny Dugan’s.”); December 21. 1851(“Sunlight on pine-needles is the phenomenon of a winter day.”); February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually. . . The sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and pass rays through them."); February 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove, as if both the silvery-lighted and greenish bough and the shadowy intervals of the shade behind belong to one tree.”); December 8, 1855 ("Yet it is cheering to walk there while the sun is reflected from far through the aisles with a silvery light from the needles of the pine.”); December 3, 1856 (“Tthe pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon. . . .The silvery needles of the pine straining the light.”).

The Lygodium palmatum twining round the goldenrods. [CLIMBING FERN, or Hartford Fern (Lygodium palmatum) . A species of fern found, rarely, from Massachusetts to Kentucky and southward, remarkable for climbing or twining around weeds and shrubs ~ Wikisource.] See 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.”); May 1, 1859 ("The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.")

November 30. A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, November 30

An old cellar hole.

I sit on the stump of an

oak which once grew here.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, My eye rested with pleasure on the white pines.

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/HDT511130

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights.

November 20

P. M. - To Ministerial Swamp. 

I have seen more gray squirrels of late (as well as musquash); I think not merely because the trees are bare but because they are stirring about more, — nutting, etc. 

Martial Miles tells me of a snapping turtle caught in the river at Waltham, about October 1st, he thinks, which weighed fifty-five pounds (?). He saw it. There were two fighting. 

He says that a marsh hawk had his nest in his meadow several years, and though he shot the female three times, the male with but little delay returned with a new mate. He often watched these birds, and saw that the female could tell when the male was coming a long way off. He thought that he fed her and the young all together (?). She would utter a scream when she perceived him, and, rising into the_air (before or after the scream ?), she turned over with her talons uppermost, while he passed some three rods above, and caught without fail the prey which he let drop, and then carried it to her young. He had seen her do this many times, and always without failing. 

The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting. 

I go across the great Tony Wheeler pasture. It is a cool but pleasant November afternoon. 

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights. I think it is peculiar among the months for the amount [of] sparkling white light reflected from a myriad of surfaces. The air is so clear, and there are so many bare, polished, bleached or hoary surfaces to reflect the light. Few things are more exhilarating, if it is only moderately cold, than to walk over bare pastures and see the abundant sheeny light like a universal halo, reflected from the russet and bleached earth. The earth shines perhaps more than in spring, for the reflecting surfaces are less dimmed now. It is not a red but a white light. 

In the woods and about swamps, as Ministerial, also, there are several kinds of twigs, this year’s shoots of shrubs, which have a slight down or hairiness, hardly perceptible in ordinary lights though held in the hand, but which, seen toward the sun, reflect a cheering silvery light. Such are not only the sweet-fern, but the hazel in a less degree, alder twigs, and even the short huckleberry twigs, also lespedeza stems. It is as if they were covered with a myriad fine spiculae which reflect a dazzling white light, exceedingly warming to the spirits and imagination. This gives a character of snug warmth and cheerfulness to the swamp, as if it were a place where the sun consorted with rabbits and partridges. Each individual hair on every such shoot above the swamp is bathed in glowing sunlight and is directly conversant with the day god. 

The cinnamon-brown of withered pinweeds (how long?) colors whole fields. It may be put with the now paler brown'of hardhack heads and the now darker brown of the dicksonia fern by walls.

I notice this afternoon that the pasture white oaks have commonly a few leaves left on the lower limbs and also next the trunk. 

Winter rye is another conspicuous green amid the withered grass fields. 

The rubuses are particularly hardy to retain their leaves. Not only low blackberry and high blackberry leaves linger still fresh, but the Rubus hispidus leaves last all winter like an evergreen. The great round-leaved pyrola, dwarf cornel, checkerberry, and lambkill have a lake or purplish tinge on the under side at present, and these last two are red or purplish above. It is singular that a blush should suffuse the under side of the thick leaved pyrola while it is still quite green above. 

When walnut husks have fairly opened, showing the white shells within, — the trees being either quite bare or with a few withered leaves at present, — a slight jar with the foot on the limbs causes them to rattle down in a perfect shower, and on bare, grass-grown pasture ground it is very easy picking them up. 

As I returned over Conantum summit yesterday, just before sunset, and was admiring the various rich browns of the shrub oak plain across the river, which seemed to me more wholesome and remarkable, as more permanent, than their late brilliant colors, I was surprised to see a broad halo travelling with me and always opposite the sun to me, at least a quarter of a mile off and some three rods wide, on the shrub oaks. 

 

Quaker colors

The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside, especially seen when the sun is low, — Quaker colors, sober ornaments, beauty that quite satisfies the eye. The richness and variety are the same as before, the colors different, more incorruptible and lasting. 

Sprague Of Cohasset states to the Natural History Society, September 1st, ’58, that the light under the tail of the common glow-worm “remained for 15 minutes after death.” 

Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors’ cattle to go at large because they don’t want their ill will, -- are afraid to anger them. They are abettors of the ill-doers. 

Who are the religious? They who do not differ much from mankind generally, except that they are more conservative and timid and useless, but who in their conversation and correspondence talk about kindness of Heavenly Father. Instead of going bravely about their business, trusting God ever, they do like him who says “Good sir” to the one he fears, or whistles to the dog that is rushing at him. And because they take His name in vain so often they presume that they are better than you. Oh, their religion is a rotten squash.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 20, 1858

The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces. See October 25, 1858 ("The light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.");  November 2, 1853( "We come home in the autumn twilight . . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”);  November 10, 1858 (""This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces . . . A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one;); ; November 17, 1858 (“We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us . . . “November Lights" would be a theme for me.”); 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. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight."); November 28, 1856 ("The sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs . . . It is a true November phenomenon.")

The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting. See  October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free"); see also September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting."); October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting.");  October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting.");

The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside. . . Quaker colors.  See October 25, 1858 ("Now, too, for the different shades of brown, especially in sprout-lands. I see [three] kinds of oaks now, — the whitish brown of the white oak, the yellowish brown of the black oak, and the red or purplish brown [of the scarlet oak] (if it can be called brown at all . . . but perhaps that may be called a lighter, yellowish brown, and so distinguished from the black in color. It has more life in it now than the white and black, not withered so much. These browns are very pure and wholesome colors");   November 29, 1857 ("I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak,. . . clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner . . .Then there is the now rich, dark brown of the black oak’s large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its lighter, almost yellowish, brown under side. Then the salmonish hue of white oak leaves, with the under sides less distinctly lighter."); December 21, 1856 ("The red oak leaves look thinner and flatter, and therefore perhaps show the lobes more, than those of the black. The white oak leaves are the palest and most shrivelled, the lightest, perhaps a shade of buff, but they are of various shades, some pretty dark with a salmon tinge. The swamp white oak leaves . . .are very much like the shrub oak . . . Both remarkable for their thick, leathery, sound leaves, uninjured by insects, and their very light downy under sides. The black oak leaves are the darkest brown, with clear or deep yellowish-brown undersides . . .The scarlet oak leaves, which are very numerous still, are of a ruddy color, having much blood in their cheeks. They are all winter the reddest on the hillsides . . .The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Colors of March-- Brown Season

Who are bad neighbors? They who suffer their neighbors’ cattle to go at large are abettors of the ill-doers. See October 12, 1858 ("This town has made a law recently against cattle going at large, and assigned a penalty of five dollars. I am troubled by an Irish neighbor’s cow and horse, and have threatened to have them put in the pound. But a lawyer tells me that these town laws are hard to put through, there are so many quibbles. He never knew the complainant to get his case if the defendant were a-mind to contend. However, the cattle were kept out several days, till a Sunday came, and then they were all in my grounds again, as I heard, but all my neighbors tell me that I cannot have them impounded on that day. Indeed, I observe that very many of my neighbors do for this reason regularly turn their cattle loose on Sundays.")

November 20. See  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 20

The withered oak leaves 

of various hues of brown

 mottling a hillside.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The glory of November 

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/hdt-581120

A cold and blustering afternoon. They want me to agree not to breathe castles.

November 16.

November 16, 2018

P. M. -— To Hubbard’s Close. 

A cold and blustering afternoon; sky for the most part overcast. 

The Cornus Canadensis is called by Loudon “a deciduous herbaceous plant,” the pyrolas “ever-green herbaceous plants.” The bunchberry leaves are now little if any withered, but generally drooping, the four hanging together as is the habit of the sericea and florida, the lambkill, etc. The plant dies down to its perennial spring. You can see its pink bud already strongly formed. But this year’s plant is very slow to die, and I suspect many of the leaves remain green all winter under the snow. They are now generally purplish-tinged. Let me observe in what respect the pyrolas are more evergreen. The new bud is formed between the present two leaves, the old leaves, lower on the stem or vine, being mostly decayed. 

There are many large limbs strewn about the woods, which were broken off by that strong southeast wind in peach time. These are now thickly leaved, the dead wood not being able to cast off the withered leaves; but the leaves having died thus prematurely are of a different color from that their companions changed to, — a peculiar yellow-brown (i. e. chestnuts and oaks) with more or less green in it.

I see a gray squirrel, eight or ten rods off in Hubbard’s large wood, scamper over the leaves and run up an oak. From the oak it crosses ascending into a tall white pine top, and there lies concealed, and I can see no more of him. 

The earth half covered with this slight snow, merely grayed with [it], is the more like the bare gray limbs of oak woods now, and such woods and the earth make the more uniform impression. 

Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods. The mountain laurel, the lycopodium dendroideum, complanatum, and lucidulum, and the terminal shield fern are also very interesting.

Preaching? Lecturing? Who are ye that ask for these things? What do ye want to hear, ye puling infants? A trumpet-sound that would train you up to mankind, or a nurse’s lullaby? The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state. It would be a relief to breathe one’s self occasionally among men. If there, were any magnanimity in us, any grandeur of soul, anything but sects and parties undertaking to patronize God and keep the mind within bounds, how often we might encourage and provoke one another by a free expression! I will not consent to walk with my mouth muzzled, not till I am rabid, until there is danger, that I shall bite the unoffending and that my bite will produce hydrophobia. 

Freedom of speech! It hath not entered into your hearts to conceive what those words mean. It is not leave given me by your sect to say this or that; it is when leave is given to your sect to withdraw. The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. I ask only that one fourth part of my honest thoughts be spoken aloud. 'What is it you tolerate, you church to-day? Not truth, but a lifelong hypocrisy. Let us have institutions framed not out of our rottenness, but out of our soundness. This factitious piety is like stale gingerbread. I would like to suggest what a pack of fools and cowards we mankind are. They want me to agree not to breathe castles. If I should draw a long breath in the neighborhood of these institutions, their weak and flabby sides would fall out, for my own inspiration would exhaust the air about them. The church! it is eminently the timid institution, and the heads and pillars of it are constitutionally and by principle the greatest cowards in the community. The voice that goes up from the monthly concerts is not so brave and so cheering as that which rises from the frogponds of the land. The best “preachers,” so called, are an effeminate class; their bravest thoughts wear petticoats. If they have any manhood they are sure to forsake the ministry, though they were to turn their attention to baseball. Look at your editors of popular magazines. I have dealt with two or three the most liberal of them. They are afraid to print a whole sentence, a round sentence, a free-spoken sentence. They want to get thirty thousand subscribers, and they will do anything to get them. They consult the D.D.’s and all the letters of the alphabet before printing a 'sentence.‘ I have been into many of these cowardly New England towns where they profess Christianity, — invited to speak, perchance, —where they were trembling in their shoes at the thought of the things you might say, as if they knew their weak side, — that they were weak on all sides. The devil they have covenanted with is a timid devil. If they would let their sores alone they might heal, and they could to the wars again like men; but in stead of that they get together in meeting-house cellars, rip off the bandages and poultice them with sermons.

One of our New England towns is scaled up hermetically like a molasses-hogshead,— such is its sweet Christianity, — only a little of the sweet trickling out at the cracks enough to daub you. The few more liberal-minded or indifferent inhabitants are the flies that buzz about it. It is Christianity bunged up. I see awful eyes looking out through a bull’s-eye at the bung-hole. It is doubtful if they can fellowship with me. 

The further you go up country, I think the worse it is, the more benighted they are. On the one side you will find a barroom which holds the “Scoffers,” so called, on the other a vestry where is a monthly concert of prayer. There is just as little to cheer you in one of these companies as the other. It may be often the truth and righteousness of the barroom that saves the town. There is nothing to redeem the bigotry and moral cowardice of New-Englanders in my eyes. You may find a cape which runs six miles into the sea that has not a man of moral courage upon it. What is called faith is an immense prejudice. Like the Hindoos and Russians and Sandwich-Islanders (that were), they are the creatures of an institution. They do not think; they adhere like oysters to what their fathers and grandfathers adhered to. How often is it that the shoemaker, by thinking over his last, can think as valuable a thought as he makes a valuable shoe? 

I have been into the town, being invited to speak to the inhabitants, not valuing, not having read even, the Assembly’s Catechism, and I try to stimulate them by reporting the best of my experience. I see the craven priest looking round for a hole to escape at, alarmed  because it was he that invited me thither, and an awful silence pervades the audience. They think they will never get me there again. But the seed has not all fallen in stony and shallow ground. 

The following are our shrubby evergreen plants (not including Coniferas): — 

• Mitchella repens 
• Linnaea 
• Andromeda Polifolia 
• Cassandra calyculata 
• Mayflower 
• Checkerberry 
• Mountain laurel 
• Lambkill 
• Kalmia glauca 
• Labrador tea 
• Common cranberry 
• European cranberry 

To which I will add the herbaceous:— 

• Chimaphila umbellata 
•                  maculata 

N. B. — Rubus hispidus leaves last through the winter, turning reddish.

It is no compliment to be invited to lecture before the rich Institutes and Lyceums. The settled lecturers are as tame as the settled ministers. The audiences do not want to hear any prophets; they do not wish to be stimulated and instructed, but entertained. They, their wives and daughters, go to the Lyceum to suck a sugarplum. The little of medicine they get is disguised with sugar. It is never the reformer they hear there, but a faint and timid echo of him only. They seek a pass time merely. Their greatest guns and sons of thunder are only wooden guns and great-grandsons of thunder, who give them smooth words well pronounced from manuscripts well punctuated, — they who have stolen the little fire they have from prophets whom the audience would quake to hear. They ask for orators that will entertain them and leave them where they found them. The most successful lecturing on Washington, or what-not, is an awful scratching of backs to the tune, it may be, of fifty thousand dollars. Sluggards that want to have a lullaby sung to them! Such manikins as I have described are they, alas, who have made the greatest stir (and what a shallow stir) in the church and Lyceum, and in Congress. They want a medicine that will not interfere with their daily meals. 

There is the Lowell Institute with its restrictions, requiring a certain faith in the lecturers. How can any free thinking man accept its terms? It is as if you were to resolve that you would not eat oysters that were not of a particular faith, — that, for instance, did not believe the Thirty-Nine Articles,— for the faith that is in an oyster is just as valuable as the faith referred to in Mr. Lowell’s will. These popular lecturers, our preachers, and magazines are for women and children in the bad sense. 

The curators have on their lists the names of the men who came before the Philomathean Institute in the next large town and did no harm; left things in statu quo, so that all slept the better for it; only confirmed the audience in their previous badness; spoke a good word for youngsters to be good boys. A man may have a good deal to say who has not any desk to thump on, who does not thunder in bad air. 

They want all of a man but his truth and independence and manhood. 

One who spoke to their condition would of course make them wince, and they would retaliate, i. e. kick him out, or stop their ears. 

The cold weather which began on the 12th, with the snow of the 13th and since, suddenly killed the few remaining living leaves, without any exceptions to speak of. Most foreign plants at once dropped their leaves, though pretty thick before, but there are many still on the privet. The sweet-fern in some places has still many green, more than any indigenous shrub or tree, though far the greater part of them (the sweet-ferns) are bare or withered. Probably the larch about fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 16, 1858

A cold and blustering afternoon; sky for the most part overcast. See November 13, 1851 (“A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety.”)