The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

October 13.

October 13, 2021

Drizzling, misty showers still, with a little misty sunshine at intervals.

The trees have lost many of their leaves in the last twenty-four hours.

The sun has got so low that it will do to let his rays in on the earth; the cattle do not need their shade now, nor men. Warmth is more desirable now than shade.

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

• In summer the animal and vegetable in him are perfected as in a torrid zone; he lives in his senses mainly.
• In winter cold reason and not warm passion has her sway; he lives in thought and reflection; he lives a more spiritual, a less sensual, life.
• If he has passed a merely sensual summer, he passes his winter in a torpid state like some reptiles and other animals.
• The mind of man in the two seasons is like the atmosphere of summer compared with the atmosphere of winter.
• He depends more on himself in winter, — on his own resources, — less on outward aid.
• Insects, it is true, disappear for the most part, and those animals which depend upon them; but the nobler animals abide with man the severity of winter.
• He migrates into his mind, to perpetual summer.
• And to the healthy man the winter of his discontent never comes.

Mr. Pratt told me that Jonas? Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately near Beck Stow's swamp with twenty-five pounds of honey in it, in the top of a maple tree which was blown down.

There is now a large swarm in the meeting-house chimney, in a flue not used.

Many swarms have gone off that have not been heard from.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1851

Man in winter. See December 8, 1850 ( "The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!"); October 27, 1851 ("The cold numbs my fingers. Winter, with its inwardness, is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think."); January 17, 1852 ("In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer ") April 1, 1852 ("We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky. It is a good experience to have gone through with."); January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars."); December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, . . . is as it was designed and made to be.")

Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately. See February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees,. . .. Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey."); September 30, 1852 ("custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree "). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

October 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

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

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall.

October 10. 

October 10, 2020

Burdock, Ranunculus acris, rough hawk-weed.

A drizzling rain to-day.

The air is full of falling leaves. The streets are strewn with elm leaves. The trees begin to look thin. The butternut is perhaps the first on the street to lose its leaves.

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall.

Glow-worms in the evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1852

Ranunculus acris. See June 15, 1851 ("I see the tall crowfoot now in the meadows ( Ranunculus acris ) , with a smooth stem ."); August 21, 1851 ("Ranunculus acris (tall crowfoot) still."); October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow, ...”)

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall. See October 24, 1855 ("The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind."); October 24, 1858 ("This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. ")

It warms us twice, and the first warmth is the most wholesome and memorable

October 22

A week or more of fairest Indian summer ended last night, for to-day it rains. It was so warm day before yesterday, I worked in my shirt-sleeves in the woods. 

I cannot easily dismiss the subject of the fallen leaves. 

How densely they cover and conceal the water for several feet in width, under and amid the alders and button-bushes and maples along the shore of the river, — still light, tight, and dry boats, dense cities of boats, their fibres not relaxed by the waters, undulating and rustling with every wave, of such various pure and delicate, though fading, tints, — of hues that might make the fame of teas, — dried on great Nature's coppers. 

And then see this great fleet of scattered leaf boats, still tight and dry, each one curled up on every side by the sun's skill, like boats of hide, scarcely moving in the sluggish current, — like the great fleets with which you mingle on entering some great mart, some New York which we are all approaching together. 

Or else they are slowly moving round in some great eddy which the river makes, where the water is deep and the current is wearing into the bank. How gently each has been deposited on the water! No violence has been used toward them yet. But next the shore, as thick as foam they float, and when you turn your prow that way, list! what a rustling of the crisped waves! 

Wet grounds about the edges of swamps look dry with them, and many a wet foot you get in consequence.

 Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed upon the earth. This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year. This annual decay and death, this dying by inches, before the whole tree at last lies down and turns to soil. As trees shed their leaves, so deer their horns, and men their hair or nails. The year's great crop. 

I am more interested in it than in the English grass alone or in the corn. It prepares the virgin mould for future corn fields on which the earth fattens. They teach us how to die. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! A myriad wrappers for germinating seeds. By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. 

The ground is all parti-colored with them. For beautiful variety can any crop be compared with them? The dogwood (poison sumach) blazing its sins as scarlet, the early-blushing maple, the rich chrome (?) yellow of the poplar, the mulberry ash, the brilliant red huckleberry with which the hills' backs are painted like sheep's, — not merely the plain flavidness of corn, but all the colors of the rainbow. 

The salmon-colored oaks, etc., etc. The frost touches them, and, with the slightest breath of day or jarring of earth's axle, see in what showers they come floating down, at the first earnest touch of autumn's wand. 

They stoop to rise, to mount higher in coming years by subtiler chemistry, and the sapling's first fruits, thus shed, transmuted at last, may adorn its crown, when, in after years, it has become the monarch of the forest.

Yesterday, toward night, gave Sophia and mother a sail as far as the Battle-Ground. One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — though he is regarded by most as a vicious character, — whose whole motive was so easy to fathom, — thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably. 

So much do we love actions that are simple. They are all poetic. We, too, would fain be so employed. 

So unlike the pursuits of most men, so artificial or complicated. Consider how the broker collects his winter's wood, what sport he makes of it, what is his boat and hand-cart! Postponing instant life, he makes haste to Boston in the cars, and there deals in stocks, not quite relishing his employment, — and so earns the money with which he buys his fuel. And when, by chance, I meet him about this indirect and complicated business, I am not struck with the beauty of his employment. It does not harmonize with the sunset. How much more the former consults his genius, some genius at any rate! 

Now I should love to get my fuel so, — I have got some so, — but though I may be glad to have it, I do not love to get it in any other way less simple and direct. 

For if I buy one necessary of life, I cheat myself to some extent, I deprive myself of the pleasure, the inexpressible joy, which is the unfailing reward of satisfying any want of our nature simply and truly. 

No trade is simple, but artificial and complex. It postpones life and substitutes death. It goes against the grain. If the first generation does not die of it, the third or fourth does. In face of all statistics, I will never believe that it is the descendants of tradesmen who keep the state alive, but of simple yeomen or laborers. 

This, indeed, statistics say of the city reinforced by the country. The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last. He makes a habit of disregarding the moral right and wrong for the legal or political, commits a slow suicide, and thinks to recover by retiring on to a farm at last. This simplicity it is, and the vigor it imparts, that enables the simple vagabond, though he does get drunk and is sent to the house of correction so often, to hold up his head among men. 

"If I go to Boston every day and sell tape from morning till night," says the merchant (which we will admit is not a beautiful action), "some time or other I shall be able to buy the best of fuel without stint." Yes, but not the pleasure of picking it up by the riverside, which, I may say, is of more value than the warmth it yields, for it but keeps the vital heat in us that we may repeat such pleasing exercises. 

It warms us twice, and the first warmth is the most wholesome and memorable, compared with which the other is mere coke. It is to give no account of my employment to say that I cut wood to keep me from freezing, or cultivate beans to keep me from starving. Oh, no, the greatest value of these labors is received before the wood is teamed home, or the beans are harvested (or winnowed from it). 

Goodwin stands on the solid earth. 

The earth looks solider under him, and for such as he no political economies, with their profit and loss, supply and demand, need ever be written, for they will need to use no policy. As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth. There is no secret in his trade, more than in the sun's. It is no mystery how he gets his living; no, not even when he steals it. But there is less double-dealing in his living than in your trade. 

Goodwin is a most constant fisherman. He must well know the taste of pickerel by this time. He will fish, I would not venture to say how many days in succession. When I can remember to have seen him fishing almost daily for some time, if it rains, I am surprised on looking out to see him slowly wending his way to the river in his oilcloth coat, with his basket and pole. 

I saw him the other day fishing in the middle of the stream, the day after I had seen him fishing on the shore, while by a kind of magic I sailed by him; and he said he was catching minnow for bait in the winter. When I was twenty rods off, he held up a pickerel that weighed two and a half pounds, which he had forgot to show me before, and the next morning, as he afterward told me, he caught one that weighed three pounds. 

If it is ever necessary to appoint a committee on fish-ponds and pickerel, let him be one of them. Surely he is tenacious of life, hard to scale.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 22, 1853

One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart . . ., — though he is regarded by most as a vicious character, — whose whole motive was so easy to fathom, — thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably. . . .Goodwin stands on the solid earth . . . Goodwin is a most constant fisherman. See November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season. ");   November 28, 1858 ("Goodwin cannot be a very bad man, he is so cheery. "); November 28, 1859 ("Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot."); March 18, 1857 ("While Emerson sits writing [in] his study this still, overcast, moist day, Goodwin is paddling up the still, dark river. Emerson burns twenty-five cords of wood and fourteen tons of coal; Goodwin perhaps a cord and a half, much of which he picks out of the river.")

They teach us how to die. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! A myriad wrappers for germinating seeds. By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. See October 20. 1853 ("Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind")

Now I should love to get my fuel so, — I have got some so. See October 20, 1855 ("I like best the bread which I have baked, the garment which I have made, the shelter which I have constructed, the fuel which I have gathered.");  October 21, 1857 ("I become a connoisseur in wood at last, take only the best.")  

For if I buy one necessary of life, I cheat myself to some extent, I deprive myself of the pleasure, the inexpressible joy, which is the unfailing reward of satisfying any want of our nature simply and truly. See October 21, 1857 ("It is pitiful to see a man of sixty, a philosopher, per chance, inquiring for a bearing apple orchard for sale. If he must have one, why did he not set it out when he was thirty?")

It warms us twice, and the first warmth is the most wholesome and. . . the greatest value of these labors is received before the wood is teamed home. See September 24, 1855 (" I derive a separate and peculiar pleasure from every stick that I find. Each has its history, of which I am reminded when I come to burn it, and under what circumstances I found it. "); October 20, 1855 ("Thus one half the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy.")

Orange leaves.

August 18. 

Thursday. 

Half the leaves of some cherries in dry places are quite orange now and ready to fall.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1859

See August 18, 1853 ("Many leaves of the cultivated cherry are turned yellow, and a very few leaves of the elm have fallen.");  August 29, 1852 (The first leaves begin to fall; a few yellow ones lie in the road this morning, loosened by the rain and blown off by the wind.") October 13, 1857 ("Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red orange color.")

Mosses at low water.

August 5. 

See many yellowed peach leaves and butternut leaves, which have fallen in the wind yesterday and the rain to-day.

The lowest dark-colored rocks near the water at the stone bridge (i. e. part of the bridge) are prettily marked with (apparently) mosses, which have adhered to them at higher water and now withered and bleached on, — in fact are transferred, — and by their whitish color are seen very distinctly on the dark stone and have a very pretty effect. They are quite like sea mosses in their delicacy, though not equally fine with many. These are very permanently and closely fastened to the rock. This is a phenomenon of low water. Also see them transferred to wood, as pieces of bridges.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1859

August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5

 

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 © 2009-2021

New reflections now from the under sides of leaves turned up by the wind.

June 14. 

June 14, 2013

There are various new reflections now of the light, viz. from the under sides of leaves (fresh and white) turned up by the wind, and also from the bent blades (horizontal tops) of rank grass in the meadows, — a sort of bluish sheeny light, this last. 

Saw a wild rose from the cars in Weston. The early red roses are out in gardens at home.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1852

New reflections now from the under sides of leaves turned up by the wind. See  June 4, 1854 (“And in the washing breeze the lighter under sides begin to show, and a new light is flashed upon the year, lighting up and enlivening the landscape.”); June 11, 1860 (“I now first begin to notice the silvery under sides of the red maple and swamp white oak leaves, turned up by the wind”); July 23, 1860 (“One of the most noticeable phenomena of this green-leaf season is the conspicuous reflection of light in clear breezy days from the silvery under sides of some. All trees and shrubs which have light-colored or silvery under sides to their leaves, but especially the swamp white oak and the red maple, are now very bright and conspicuous in the strong wind after the rain of the morning.”)

Saw a wild rose from the cars. See June 8, 1854 ("The Rosa nitida bud which I plucked yesterday has blossomed to-day "); June 12, 1854 ("Rosa lucida, probably yesterday, the 11th, judging from what I saw Saturday, i. e. the 10th. A bud in pitcher the 13th.”); June 13, 1853 ("the smooth wild rose yesterday."); June 15, 1851 (“See the first wild rose to-day on the west side of the railroad causeway”); June 15, 1853 (“Here are many wild roses northeast of Trillium Woods. It is the pride of June. I bring home the buds ready to expand, put them in a pitcher of water, and the next morning they open and fill my chamber with fragrance.”); June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”)

For some reason I now remember the autumn

May 10

This Monday the streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, — cows and calves and colts. 

The rain is making the grass grow apace. It appears to stand upright, — its blades, — and you can almost see it grow.

For some reason I now remember the autumn, — the succory and the goldenrod. We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? 

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. 

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! The leaves are but calyx and escort to the flower. 

Some beds of clover wave. 

Some look out only for the main chance, and do not regard appearances nor manners; others — others regard these mainly. It is an immense difference. I feel it frequently. It is a theme I must dwell upon. 

There is an aurora borealis to-night, and I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 10, 1852

The streets are full of cattle being driven up-country, See April 30, 1860 ("Cattle begin to go up-country."); May 4, 1853 ("Cattle are going up country."); May 6, 1855 ("Road full of cattle going up country.”); May 7, 1856 ("For a week the road has been full of cattle going up country. "); May 8, 1854 ("I hear the voices of farmers driving their cows past to their up-country pastures now.");

We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then. See May 7, 1852 ("How full of reminiscence is any fragrance!"). Compare July 1, 1856 ("The air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.") July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then?"); October 26, 1853 ("It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us."); 

Are those the young keys of sugar maples that I see? See May 1, 1860 ("The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite."); May 29, 1854 (“The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”)

The Canada (?) (N. Brooks's) plum in bloom, and a cherry tree. See May 10, 1855 ("Canada plum opens petals to-day and leafs. Domestic plum only leafs.”) and note to May 10, 1856 ("Mr. Prichard’s Canada plum will open as soon as it is fair weather. "); May 10, 1857 ("Cultivated cherry out. "); May 10, 1858 ("The northern wild red cherry by Everett's, apparently to-morrow.")

How closely the flower follows upon, if it does not precede, the leaf! See April 28, 1852 ("The spring flowers wait not to perfect their leaves before they expand their blossoms. The blossom in so many cases precedes the leaf; so with poetry? They flash out.") 

I hear a snoring, praying sound from frogs in the river, baser and less ringing and sonorous than the dreamers. See May 25, 1851 (“Now, at 8.30 o'clock P.M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.”); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog." Also April 3, 1858 (“Sometimes the meadow will be almost still; then they will begin in earnest, and plainly excite one an other into a general snoring or eructation over a quarter of a mile of meadow.”); April 11, 1854 (“Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? ”); April 15, 1855 ("That general tut tut tut tut, or snoring, of frogs on the shallow meadow heard first slightly the 5th.."); May 8, 1857 ("It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris)."); May 6, 1858 ("About 9 P. M. I went to the edge of the river to hear the frogs. It was a warm and moist, rather foggy evening, and the air full of the ring of the toad, the peep of the hylodes, and the low growling croak or stertoration of the Rana palustris. . . . There was a universal snoring of the R. palustris all up and down the river on each side, . . . It is a hard, dry, unmusical, fine watchman’s-rattle-like stertoration, swelling to a speedy conclusion.”)

May 10.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 10

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 ©  2009-2021

The earth is our ship.

January 2

January 2, 2019

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

Going up the hill through Stow’s young oak wood land, I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. This is the voice of the wood now. 

It would be comparatively still and more dreary here in other respects, if it were not for these leaves that hold on. It sounds like the roar of the sea, and is enlivening and inspiriting like that, suggesting how all the land is seacoast to the aerial ocean. It is the sound of the surf, the rut of an unseen ocean, billows of air breaking on the forest like water on itself or on sand and rocks. It rises and falls, wells and dies away, with agreeable alternation as the sea surf does. Perhaps the landsman can foretell a storm by it. 

It is remarkable how universal these grand murmurs are, these backgrounds of sound, —the surf, the wind in the forest, waterfalls, etc.,-—which yet to the ear and in their origin are essentially one voice, the earth-voice, the breathing or snoring of the creature. 

The earth is our ship, and this is the sound of the wind in her rigging as we sail. 

Just as the inhabitant of Cape Cod hears the surf ever breaking on its shores, so we countrymen hear this kindred surf on the leaves of the forest. Regarded as a voice, — though it is not articulate, — (but this is nearer a consonant sound), labials, dentals, palatals, sibilants, mutes, aspirate, etc., so this may be called folial or frondal, produced by air driven against the leaves, and comes nearest to our sibilants or as pirate. 

The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown. 

Michaux said that white oaks would be distinguished by their retaining their leaves in the winter, but as far as my observation goes they cannot be so distinguished. All our large oaks may retain a few leaves at the base of the lower limbs and about the trunks, though only a few, and the white oak scarcely more than the others, while the same trees when young are all alike thickly clothed in the winter, but the leaves of the white oaks are the most withered and shrivelled of them all. 

Why do young oaks retain their leaves while old ones shed them? Why do they die on the stem, having some life at the base in the one case, while they wither through at the base in the other case? Is it because in the former case they have more sap and vigor? 

There being some snow on the ground, I can easily distinguish the forest on the mountains (the Peterboro Hills, etc.) and tell which are forested, those parts and those mountains being dark like a shadow. I cannot distinguish the forest thus far in the summer. 

The white pines, etc., as I look down on them from this hill, are now darker, as becomes the sterner season, like a frost-bitten apple, — a sombre green.

When I hear the hypercritical quarrelling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, — Mr. Webster, perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. Kirkham’s rule, — I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. 

Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat. 

The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk, — turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively, — but so the beautiful walkers are not made. 

Mediaeval, or law, Latin seems to have invented the word “forest,” not being satisfied with silva, nemus, etc. Webster makes it from the same root with “L. foris, Fr. hors, and the Saxon faran, to go, to depart.” The allied words “all express distance from cities and civilization, and are from roots expressing departure or wandering,” —as if this newer term were needed to describe those strange, wild woods furthest from the centres of civilization. 

The earth, where quite bare, is now, and for five or six weeks, russet without any lively red, —not golden-russet. 

I notice on the top of the Cliffs that the extremities of the smooth sumach are generally dead and withered, while those of the staghorn, which art so downy, are alive. Is this a prevailing difference? Which extends furthest north? 

The outside bark-scales of some large pitch pines in the midst of the woods having dropped off gives a peculiar flatness to the ridges, as if it had been shaved or scraped. 

Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Tells of Jake Lakin losing a hound so, which went under the ice and was drowned below the Holt; was found afterward by Sted Buttrick, his collar taken off and given to Lakin. They used to cross the river there on the ice, going to market, formerly. 

Looking from the southwest side of Walden toward Heywood's Peak before sunset, the brown light on the oak leaves is almost dazzling.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 2, 1859

I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. See November 1, 1857 (“When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus”)

First of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. See December 16, 1859 (“How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in conventional Latinisms!”); February 3, 1860 ("Any fool can make a rule /  And every fool will mind it.")

Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Compare January 30, 1855 ("Minott . . .told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him.")

January 2. See A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau,  January 2

The sharp dry rustle

of withered oak leaves is the

voice of the wood now –

The earth is our ship

and this is the sound of the

rigging as we sail.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The earth is our ship.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt590102

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses recall past winters.

December 5. 

Some sugar maples, both large and small, have still, like the larger oaks, a few leaves about the larger limbs near the trunk. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep and a fine mizzle falling and freezing to the twigs and stubble, so that there is quite a glaze. The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters. These humble withered plants, which have not of late attracted your attention, now arrest it by their very stiffness and exaggerated size. Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of slender ice-wands set in the snow. The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms. It is surprising how the slenderest grasses can support such a weight, but the culm is buttressed by an other icy culm or column, and the load gradually taken on. 

In the woods the drooping pines compel you to stoop. In all directions they are bowed down, hanging their heads. 

The large yellowish leaves of the black oak (young trees) are peculiarly conspicuous, rich and warm, in the midst of this ice and snow, and on the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice. 

The birches are still upright, and their numerous parallel white ice-rods remind me of the recent gossamer-like gleams which they reflected. 

How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection, and poor eyes fail to discover them even then, as I have found.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 5, 1858

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters.See December 26, 1855("The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are."); December 5, 1859 ("The perfect silence -- the stillness and motionless of the twigs and of the very weeds and withered grasses; it is as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled on her axle")

That salamander! See December 3, 1858 ("The salamander above named, found in the water of the Pout’s Nest, is the Salamandra symmetrica It is some three inches long, brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back")

The fall of the leaf is preceded by a ripe old age.

November 12.

November 12, 2018

I hear from Ricketson to-day that on the 10th the following trees, which I had not seen lately, were leafy and, as I infer, more or less unwithered. His words are, “Horse-chestnut quite full of yellow and green foliage. English walnut ditto. Beech, linden (l), hawthorn (nearly perfect in green foliage, only a little decayed at the top, but in a sheltered place), silver linden, copper beech (2), elm (3), weeping ash, Euonymus Europaeus (4). Also “the guelder-rose”‘ and “Bignonia radicans and acuminata” and “numerous shrubs in full leaf.” Of those not European, “Osage orange (Maclura), Cornus florida (handsome), tulip, three-thomed acacia, Mexican cypress.” 

He sent me specimens of those numbered above which were fresh, especially the fourth, and the third next, the second least so; but then what he sends for the American linden is greener than the European!! I find that E. Hoar observed the English elms with leaves or leafy still November 2d, near Salisbury. 

It is much the coldest day yet, and the ground is a little frozen and resounds under my tread. All people move the brisker for the cold, yet are braced and a little elated by it. They love to say, “Cold day, sir.” Though the days are shorter, you get more work out of a hired man than before, for he must work to keep warm. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

The riverside is skimmed over and presents a wintry aspect, — those great plaits, or folds, as it were, where the crystals have shot, wool-grass frozen in, and the thin white ice where the water has gone down. 

Now for a brisk and energetic walk, with a will and a purpose. Have done with sauntering, in the idle sense. You must rush to the assault of winter. Make haste into the outskirts, climb the ramparts of the town, be on the alert and let nothing escape your observation. The army is all van. 

The cold alone has brought down a good part of the remaining leaves of abeles and white willows. I see the handsome leaves of the last thickly strewn over the ice and reminding of grain even, half upside down. Pitch pine leaves are about all fallen. 

The very common redness of the recent shoots, as white maples, huckleberries, etc., now that the twigs are bare, and on many sides masses of them are run together in a maze, adds to the general russet of nature. The black willow shoots are a very pale brownish yellow. 

We are now reduced to browsing on buds and twigs, and methinks, with this diet and this cold, we shall look to the stall-fed thinkers like those unkempt cattle in meadows now, grazing the withered grass.

Examining closely the base of some frost-weed, I find in each case a little frost firmly attached to the naked woody stem just under the bark, having burst the last  for about an inch along the stem and elevated it. Perhaps this weed dies down slowly, since it blossoms a second time, and there is more sap now in the stem near its base than usual, which escapes in a vapor from the stem, and, being frozen, forms this kind of icicle. 

I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and more perfect and final maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits, and not to that of green leaves, etc., etc., which merely serve a purpose. The word “ripe” is thought by some to be derived from the verb “to reap,” according to which that is ripe which is ready to be reaped. The fall of the leaf is preceded by a ripe old age.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 12, 1858

I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and more perfect and final maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits. See Autumnal Tints ("Most appear to confound changed leaves with withered ones, as if they were to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits.")

Now for a brisk and energetic walk, with a will and a purpose. Have done with sauntering, in the idle sense. You must rush to the assault of winter. See  January 10, 1851 ("And this word "saunter," by the way, is happily derived "from idle people who roved about the country [in the Middle Ages] and asked charity under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre . . . They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds."); December 25, 1856 ("Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows.  Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.");  January 12, 1852 ("I sometimes think that I may go forth and walk hard . . . be much abroad in heat and cold, day and night; live more, expend more atmospheres, be weary often, etc., etc.” ); February 28, 1852 (“To get the value of the storm we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin . . . and there be no part in us but is wet or weather beaten, - so that we become storm men instead of fair weather men.”); April 19 1852 ("To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains and blows, keeping men indoors, then the lover of Nature must forth. Then returns Nature to her wild estate.’); 

I hear one cricket this louring day.

November 5. 

November 5, 2018

Humphrey Buttrick says that he finds old and young of both kinds of small rails, and that they breed here, though he never saw their nests. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The river has risen somewhat, on account of rain yesterday and the 30th. So it was lowest the 30th. That great fleet of leaves of the 21st October is now sunk to the bottom, near the shore, and are flatted out there, paving it thickly, and but few recently fallen are to be seen on the water; and in the woods the leaves do not lie up so crisp since the rain.

Saw Stewart shoot a Carolina rail, which was standing on the side of a musquash-cabin off Prichard’s, within two rods of him. This has no black throat and is probably the female. 

The large shallow cups of the red oak acorns look like some buttons I have seen which had lost their core. 

The Cornus florida on the Island is still full-leafed, and is now completely scarlet, though it was partly green on the 28th. It is apparently in the height of its color there now, or, if more exposed, perhaps it would have been on the 1st of November. This makes it the latest tree to change. The leaves are drooping, like the C. sericea, while those of some sprouts at its base are horizontal. Some incline to crimson. 

A few white maples are not yet bare, but thinly clothed with dull-yellow leaves which still have life in them. Judging from the two aspens, this tree, and the willows, one would say that the earliest trees to leaf were, perhaps, the last to lose their leaves. 

Little dippers were seen yesterday. 

The few remaining topmost leaves of the Salix sericea, which were the last to change, are now yellow like those of the birch. 

Water milkweed has been discounting some days, with its small upright pods. 

I hear one cricket this louring day. Since but one is heard, it is the more distinct and therefore seems louder and more musical. It is a clearer note, less creaking than before. 

A few Populus grandidentata leaves are still left on. 

The common smooth rose leaves are pretty conspicuously yellow yet along the river, and some dull-reddish high blackberry is seen by the roads. Also meadow sweet is observed yet with the rose. 

It is quite still; no wind, no insect hum, and no note of birds, but one hairy woodpecker. 

That lake grass, Glyceria fluitans, is, me thinks, more noticeable now than in summer on the surface of the fuller stream, green and purple. 

Meadow-sweet is a prominent yellow yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 5, 1858


Humphrey Buttrick says that he finds old and young of both kinds of small rails, and that they breed here, though he never saw their nests See September 7, 1858 ("Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, — among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., according to Wilson, and is like (except, perhaps, in form) to one which E. Bartlett brought me a week or ten days ago, which dropped from a load of hay carried to Stow’s barn! So perhaps it breeds here. Also a smaller egg of same form, but dull white with very pale dusky spots, which may be that of the Carolina rail."); September 9, 1858 ("Rice says he saw two meadow-hens when getting his hay in Sudbury some two months ago, and that they breed there. They kept up a peculiar note. My egg (named Sept. 7th) was undoubtedly a meadow-hen’s Rallus Virginiana."); September 18, 1858 ("Peabody says that they are seen here only in the autumn on their return from the north, though Brewer thinks their nest may be found here."); October 3, 1858 ("One brings me this morning a Carolina rail alive, this year’s bird evidently from its marks. . . . I suspect it may have been hatched here.");October 22, 1858 ("C. tells of hearing after dark the other night frequent raucous notes which were new to him, on the ammannia meadow, in the grass. Were they not meadow-hens? Rice says he saw one within a week."); June 1, 1859 ("Some boys found yesterday, in tussock of sedge amid some flags in a wet place in Cyrus Hosmer's meadow, west of the willow-row, six inches above the water, the nest evidently of a rail, with seven eggs."); July 16, 1860 ("Standing amid the pipes of the Great Meadow, I hear a very sharp creaking peep, no doubt from a rail quite near me, calling to or directing her young, who are meanwhile uttering a very faint, somewhat similar peep")


The Cornus florida on the Island is still full-leafed, and is now completely scarlet, though it was partly green on the 28th. See October 28, 1858 (“The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case. Apparently none have fallen.”)

A few white maples are not yet bare, but thinly clothed with dull-yellow leaves which still have life in them. See October 28, 1858 (“The majority of the white maples are bare, but others are still thickly leaved the leaves being a greenish yellow. It appears, then, that they hold their leaves longer than our other maples, or most trees.”) and note to October 14, 1858 ("The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress”)

The few remaining topmost leaves of the Salix sericea, which were the last to change, are now yellow like those of the birch. See November 5, 1855 (“The distant willow-tops are yellowish . . . in the right light. . . ..[B]irches, clear yellow at top”)

I hear one cricket this louring day. Since but one is heard, it is the more distinct and therefore seems louder and more musical. It is a clearer note. See November 1, 1858 ("I hear in the fields just before sundown a shriller chirping of a few crickets, reminding me that their song is getting thin and will soon be quenched"); November 3, 1858 ("Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. They then sounded peculiarly distinct, being but few here and there on a dry and warm hill, bird-like. Yet these seemed to be singing a little louder and in a little loftier strain, now that the chirp of the cricket generally was quenched.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

That lake grass, Glyceria fluitans.  See September 3, 1858 (“That floating grass by the riverside whose lower leaves, so flat and linear, float on the surface of the water.”)

November 5. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 5

I hear one cricket 

more distinct this louring day  – 

and more musical. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I hear one cricket this louring day. 

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/hdt05nov1858