Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

November 11

November 11, 2017

7 Α . M. - To Hubbard Bathing-Place. 

A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which escaped being frozen or perchance is the steam of the melting frost. 

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. I wear mittens now. 

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. 

Aster puniceus left. 

A little feathery frost on the dead weeds and grasses, especially about water, - springs and brooks (though now slightly frozen), where was some vapor in the night. 

I notice also this little frostwork about the mouth of a woodchuck's hole, where, perhaps, was a warm, moist breath from the interior, perchance from the chuck! 

 А. M. - To Fair Haven Pond by boat. 

The morning is so calm and pleasant, winter-like, that I must spend the forenoon abroad.

The river is smooth as polished silver. 

A little ice has formed along the shore in shallow bays five or six rods wide. It is for the most part of crystals imperfectly united, shaped like birds' tracks, and breaks with a pleasant crisp sound when it feels the undulations produced by my boat. 

I hear a linaria-like mew from some birds that fly over. 

Some muskrat-houses have received a slight addition in the night. The one I opened day before yesterday has been covered again, though not yet raised so high as before. 

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore, and in one place nightshade berries. 

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. 

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood through the clear, echoing, resonant air, and the lowing of cattle. 

It is rare that the water is smooth in the forenoon. It is now as smooth as in a summer evening or a September or October afternoon.

There is frost on all the weeds that rise above the water or ice. 

The Polygonum Hydropiper is the most conspicuous, abundant, and enduring of those in the water. 

I see the spire of one white with frost-crystals, a perfect imitation at a little distance of its loose and narrow spike of white flowers, that have withered. 

I have noticed no turtles since October 31st, and no frogs for a still longer time. 

At the bathing-place I looked for clams, in summer almost as thick as paving-stones there, and found none. They have probably removed into deeper water and into the mud (?). When did they move? 

The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all. 

I counted nineteen muskrat-cabins between Hubbard Bathing-Place and Hubbard's further wood, this side the Hollowell place, from two to four feet high. They thus help materially to raise and form the river-bank. 

I opened one by the Hubbard Bridge. The floor of chamber was two feet or more beneath the top and one foot above the water. It was quite warm from the recent presence of the inhabitants. 

I heard the peculiar plunge of one close by.  The instant one has put his eyes noiselessly above water he plunges like a flash, showing tail, and with a very loud sound, the first notice you have of his proximity, –that he has been there, – as loud as if he had struck a solid substance. 

This had a sort of double bed, the whole about two feet long by one foot wide and seven or eight inches high, floored thinly with dry meadow-grass. 

There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they eat. I find the roots gnawed off. Do they eat flagroot? A good deal of a small green hypnum-like river-weed forms the mouthfuls in their masonry. It makes a good sponge to mop the boat with! 

The wind has risen and sky overcast. 

I stop at Lee's Cliff, and there is a Veronica serpyllifolia out. Sail back. 

Scared up two small ducks, perhaps teal. I had not seen any of late. They have probably almost all gone south.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1853

I wear mittens now. See November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); See also February 12, 1854 ("I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.")

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. See November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead . . . Food for walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, – apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.");  See also December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. See November 1, 1853 ("I only hear some crows toward the woods."); January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side . . .I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1858 ("I hear here a faint creaking of two or three crickets or locustæ. . . They are quite silent long before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore. See July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

November 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 11

I wear mittens now.

I hear the cawing of crows

toward the distant wood.

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apples are frozen on the trees 

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-531111

Muskrat-houses begun.

September 11.

Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon. 

Muskrat-houses begun.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1855 

The mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon See August 26, 1859 ("The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound");September 20, 1855 ("Tried to trace by the sound a mole cricket, —- thinking it a frog, — advancing from two sides and looking where our courses intersected, but in vain."); September 27, 1855 ("I traced the note of what I have falsely thought the Rana palustris, or cricket frog, to its true source [and] I found a mole cricket (Gryllotalpa brevipennis)."); September 27, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore.") 

Muskrat-houses. See September 10, 1858 ("A musquash-house begun."); September 20, 1855 ("Open a new and pretty sizable muskrat-house with no hollow yet made in it"); September 26, 1857 ("I see musquash-houses"); October 15, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished."); October 16, 1859 ("I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores. To me this is an important and suggestive sight . . . I remember this phenomenon annually for thirty years. A more constant phenomenon here than the new haystacks in the yard, for they were erected here probably before man dwelt here and may still be erected here when man has departed. For thirty years I have annually observed, about this time or earlier, the freshly erected winter lodges of the musquash along the riverside . . . So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

We have no more sap nor verdure nor color now.

December 3.

P. M. - Up river by boat to Clamshell Hill.

Saw two tree sparrows on Monroe's larch by the waterside. Larger than chip-birds, with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to mention bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash.

They were busily and very adroitly picking the seeds out of the larch cones. It would take man's clumsy fingers a good while to get at one, and then only by breaking off the scales, but they picked them out as rapidly as if they were insects on the outside of the cone, uttering from time to time a faint, tinkling chip.

I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank, pushing the sand behind them into the water. So they dig these now as places of retreat merely, or for the same purpose as the cabins, apparently.

One I explored this afternoon was formed in a low shore (Hubbard's Bathing-Place), at a spot where there were no weeds to make a cabin of, and was apparently never completed, perhaps because the shore was too low.

The ranunculus is still a fresh bright green at the bottom of the river. It is the evergreen of the river, and indeed resembles the common running evergreen (Lycopodium, I think it is called).

I see along the sides of the river, two to four inches above the surface but all at one level, clear, drop shaped crystals of ice, either held up by some twig or hanging by a dead vine of climbing mikania. They are the remains of a thin sheet of ice, which melted as the river went down, and in drops formed around and ran down these cores and again froze, and, being thicker than the surrounding ice, have outlasted it.

At J. Hosmer's tub spring, I dug out a small bull frog (?) in the sandy mud at the bottom of the tub — it was lively enough to hop — and brought it home. Probably they lie universally buried in the mud now, below the reach of frost.

In a ditch near by, under ice half an inch thick, I saw a painted tortoise moving about.

The frogs then are especially to be looked for in the mud about springs.

It is remarkable how much power I can exert through the undulations which I produce by rocking my boat in the middle of the river. Some time after I have ceased I am surprised to hear the sound of the undulations which have just reached the shores acting on the thin ice there and making a complete wreck of it for a long distance up and down the stream, cracking off pieces four feet wide and more.

I have stirred up the river to do this work, a power which I cannot put to rest. The secret of this power appears to lie in the extreme mobility, or, as I may say, irritability, of this element.

It is the principle of the roller, or of an immense weight moved by a child on balls, and the momentum is tremendous.

Some of the clamshells, freshly opened by the muskrats and left lying on their half-sunken cabins, where they are kept wet by the waves, show very handsome rainbow tints.

I examined one such this afternoon. The hinge of the shell was not broken, and I could discover no injury to the shell, except a little broken off the edges at the broadest end, as if by the teeth of the rat in order to get hold, insert its incisors.

The fish is confined to the shell by strong muscles at each end of each valve, and the rat must dissolve the union between both of these and one side of the shell before he can get it open, unless the fish itself opens it, which perhaps it cannot wide enough. I could not open one just dead without separating the muscle from the shell. The growth of the mussels shell appears to be in somewhat concentric layers or additions to a small shell or eye.

The clam which I brought home the 30th ult., and left outdoors by mistake, I now find frozen to death.

J. Hosmer told me the other day that he had seen a man eat many of these clams raw and relish them.

It is a somewhat saddening reflection that the beautiful colors of this shell for want of light cannot be said to exist, until its inhabitant has fallen a prey to the spoiler, and it is thus left a wreck upon the strand. Its beauty then beams forth, and it remains a splendid cenotaph to its departed tenant, symbolical of those radiant realms of light to which the latter has risen, - what glory he has gone to.

And, by the way, as long as they remain in “the dark unfathomed caves of ocean," they are not “gems of purest ray serene,” though fitted to be, but only when they are tossed up to light.

Probably the muskrat inserts his incisors between the edges of the shells (and so crumbles them) in order to pry them open.

Some of these shells at Clamshell Hill, whose contents were cooked by the Indians, are still entire, but separated.

Wood has spread a great many loads over his land.

People would be surprised to learn what quantities of these shellfish are annually consumed by the muskrat.

Their shells help convert the meadow mud or river sediment into food for plants.

The Indians generally — I have particularly observed it in the case of the Penobscots —make a very extensive use of the muskrat for food, and from these heaps it would seem that they used the fresh-water clam extensively also, – these two peculiarly indigenous animals.

What if it were calculated how often a muskrat rises to his stool on the surface of the ice with a mussel in his mouth and ejects the tenant, taking the roof? It is as if the occupant had not begun to live until the light, with whatever violence, is let into its shell with these magical results.

It is rather a resurrection than a death. These beaming shells, with the tints of the sky and the rainbow commingled, suggest what pure serenity has occupied it.

Look at the trees, bare or rustling with sere brown leaves, except the evergreens, their buds dormant at the foot of the leaf-stalks. Look at the fields, russet and withered, and the various sedges and weeds with dry bleached culms. Such is our relation to nature at present; such plants are we. We have no more sap nor verdure nor color now.

I remember how cheerful it has been formerly to sit around a fire outdoors amid the snow, and, while I felt some cold, to feel some warmth also, and see the fire gradually increasing and prevailing over damp, steaming and dripping logs and making a warm hearth for me.

When I see even these humble clamshells lying open along the riverside, displaying some blue, or violet, or rainbow tints, I am reminded that some pure serenity has occupied them.

(I sent two and a half bushels of my cranberries to Boston and got four dollars for them.) 

There the clam dwells within a little pearly heaven of its own.

But even in winter we maintain a temperate cheer and a serene inward life, not destitute of warmth and melody. Only the cold evergreens wear the aspect of summer now and shelter the winter birds.

Layard discovers sculptured on a slab at Kouyunjik ( Nineveh ) machines for raising water which I perceive correspond exactly to our New England well-sweeps, except that in the former case the pole is “balanced on a shaft of masonry.” He observes that it is “still generally used for irrigation in the East, as well as in south ern Europe, and called in Egypt a shadoof.” 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 3, 1853

Two tree sparrows . . . with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to mention bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash.  See December 3, 1855 ("Hear and see, of birds, only a tree sparrow. "); see also December 4, 1856 ("Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white-barred bird, perched on a large and solitary white birch. So clean and tough, made to withstand the winter. This color reminds me of the upper side of the shrub oak leaf.") And also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds

I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank. See December 3, 1852 ("The muskrats' cabins are an ornament to the river . . . Could not the architect take a hint from the pyramidal or conical form of the muskrat's house? Something of this form and color, like a large haycock in the meadow, would be in harmony with the scenery."); see also November 11, 1855 (" The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off. ");. . December 8, 1853 ("I observe a place on the shore where a small circle of the withered grass was feathered white with frost, and, putting down my hand, felt the muskrat's hole in the bank which was concealed to my eye.") And also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

I am surprised to hear the sound of the undulations which have just reached the shores acting on the thin ice there and making a complete wreck of it. See November 14, 1855 ("The motion of my boat sends an undulation to the shore, which rustles the dry sedge half immersed there.")

But even in winter we maintain a temperate cheer. See November 12, 1853 ("I hear one cricket singing still, faintly deep in the bank, now after one whitening of snow. His theme is life immortal. The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might."); November 27, 1853 ("Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow; but methinks the variety and compensation are in the stars now.")

A Book of the Seasons: November 15 (buds and twigs and gossamer reflecting November light)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

November 15

Clear yellow light of

the western sky reflected

in this smooth water.

November 15, 1853

November 15, 2016

I saw to-day a very perfect lichen on a rock in a meadow. It formed a perfect circle about fifteen inches in diameter though the rock was uneven, and was handsomely shaded by a darker stripe of older leaves, an inch or more wide, just within its circumference, like a rich lamp-mat. November 15, 1850

Here is a rainy day, which keeps me in the house. November 15, 1851

It is Indian-summer-like. November 15, 1853

A very pleasant Indian-summer day. P. M. -- To Ledum Swamp. November 15, 1859

The first snow, a mere sugaring which went off the next morning. November 15, 1854

A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. November 15, 1858

Slight as the snow is. . . I see the track of a fox which was returning from his visit to a farmyard last night, and, in the wood-path, of a man and a dog.  November 15, 1858 

By the first of November, or at most a few days later, the trees generally wear, in the main, their winter aspect, their leaves gradually falling until spring. November 15, 1857

The obvious falling of leaves (i.e., not to include the fall of the pitch pines and larches and the complete fall of the birches, white willows, etc.) ended about the first of November. November 15, 1857

At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling. November 15, 1857

The white willows, which retain many of their leaves even yet, are of a peculiar buff or fawn color. November 15, 1857

A very few bright-colored leaves on small shrubs, such as oak sprouts, black cherry, blueberry, etc., have lingered up to this time in favorable places. November 15, 1857

As I look along over the grass toward the sun at Hosmer's field, beyond Lupine Hill, I notice the shimmering effect of the gossamer, — which seems to cover it almost like a web, — occasioned by its motion, though the air is so still. This is noticed at least forty rods off. November 15, 1859

A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it. November 15, 1859

Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November; also the frost-weed and evergreen ferns. November 15, 1858

I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up. The end of last month and the first part of this is the time. November 15, 1858

Buds and twigs . . . and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down and the silver-haired andropogon grass [belong] to the first half of November. November 15, 1858

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf. November 15, 1857

The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants.  November 15, 1857

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. November 15, 1857

The water andromeda leaves have fallen, and the persistent turned that red brown. November 15, 1858

The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig. . . so that when the twig is held up to the light it appears alternately thicker and thinner. November 15, 1857

I look up the river from the railroad bridge. It is perfectly smooth between the uniformly tawny meadows, November 15, 1859

I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light. November 15, 1859

The river has risen yet higher than last night, so that I cut across Hubbard's meadow with ease. November 15, 1853

The river rising. I see a spearer’s light to-night. November 15, 1855

I see no ants on the great ant-hills, and methinks I have not for three weeks at least. November 15, 1857

My walk is the more lonely when I perceive that there are no ants now upon their hillocks in field or wood. These are deserted mounds. They have commenced their winter's sleep. November 15, 1857

This cold blast has swept the water-bugs from the pools. November 15, 1857

I hear in several places a faint cricket note, either a fine z-ing or a distincter creak, also see and hear a grasshopper's crackling flight. November 15, 1859

There is but little insect-life abroad now. November 15, 1857

As I returned over the Corner Bridge I saw cows in the sun half-way down Fair Haven Hill next the Cliff, half a mile off, the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks. November 15, 1859

Just after sundown, the waters become suddenly smooth, and the clear yellow light of the western sky is handsomely reflected in the water, making it doubly light to me on the water, diffusing light from below as well as above. November 15, 1853

The clouds were never more fairly reflected in the water than now. November 15, 1859

Were those insects on the surface after the moon rose skaters or water-bugs? November 15, 1853

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all. November 15, 1851

November 15, 2019

*****

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Lichens 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  

Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Seen from a Hillside

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be 

more beautiful than now

*****

November 15, 2019

Walking (1861 ("Travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.. . .So every man has an original wild name. . . . Our true names are nicknames.")
February 11, 1858 ("The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen, but I see none burst. They are very tightly filled and smooth, apparently stretched")
April 8, 1853 ("The spearer's light last night shone into my chamber on the wall and awakened me. ")
April 16, 1855 ("The spearer’s light to-night, and, after dark, the sound of geese honking")
April 25, 1856 ("At evening see a spearer’s light.")
April 25, 1855 ("A spearers’ fire seems three times as far off as it is.")
April 30, 1852 ("To-night and last night the spearer's light is seen on the meadows; he has been delayed by the height of the water.")
June 4, 1856 ("He pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain.")
August 18, 1854 ("We can walk across the Great Meadows now in any direction. They are quite dry. Even the pitcher-plant leaves are empty.")
August 19, 1851 ("There was one original name well given, Buster Kendal");

September 28, 1851 ("This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant.")

October 15, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. Some, it is true, are still rising. They line the river all the way. ")
October 16, 1859 ("I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores . .So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia and flags.")
October 16, 1851 ("To-night the spearers are out again")

October 20, 1858 ("There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you.")

November 1, 1857 ("I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light")

November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change.")

November 1, 1860 ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air.")

November 2, 1853 ("We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods, -- is seen through the woods, — the leaves being gone.")

November 2, 1857 (“The evergreen ferns and lycopodiums now have their day; now is the flower of their age, and their greenness is appreciated. They are much the clearest and most liquid green in the woods”)
November 2, 1857 (“My thoughts are with the polypody a long time after my body has passed. ”);
November 3, 1857 ("It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear.")
November 4, 1855 ("Many new muskrat-houses have been erected this wet weather.")
November 4, 1855 (" Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.")
November 5, 1857 ("The terminal shield fern is the handsomest and glossiest green.”)
November 5, 1857 ("At this season polypody is in the air. ")
November 5, 1857 ("The larches are fast falling.")

November 5, 1857 ("The pitch pines generally have lost their leaves now, and the larches are fast falling.”)

November 7, 1855 ("gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”)

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

November 8, 1853 ("The yellow larch leaves still hold on, — later than those of any of our pines")

November 8, 1858 ("Lichens . . .are the various grays and browns which give November its character.")

November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song.")

November 9, 1850 ("The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling off")

November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. )

November 11, 1855 ('The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off.”)

November 11, 1858 ("Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October).")

November 11, 1855 ("Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. ")
November 11, 1858 ("Hear a few of the common cricket on the side of Clamshell. Thus they are confined now to the sun on the south sides of hills and woods. They are quite silent long before sunset.")
November 12, 1853 ("The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might.")

November 12, 1859 ("The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots.”)
November 13, 1851 ("Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters.")

November 13, 1858 ("[Snow] comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth. Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs.")

November 13,1855 (" I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.”);
November 13, 1851 ("The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. . . .So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow.”)
November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)

November 13, 1858 ("The larch looks brown and nearly bare.")

November 14, 1858 ("The different colors of the water andromeda in different lights.")

November 16, 1858 (“Probably the larch about fallen.”)
November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock and various other ferns.")

November 16, 1852 ("Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are quite conspicuous half a mile distant, and are of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape.")
November 17, 1858 ("Evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still")

November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds, when my hands were uncomfortably cold.”)
November 18, 1855 ("About an inch of snow fell last night, but the ground was not at all frozen or prepared for it. A little greener grass and stubble here and there seems to burn its way through it this forenoon.")

November 18, 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 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm.”)

November 20, 1857 ("The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees.")

November 20, 1858("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces.")

November 23, 1857 ("The water andromeda [at Gowing's Swamp] makes a still more uniformly dense thicket, which. . .makes an impression of smoothness and denseness, – its rich brown, wholesome surface, even as grass or moss.")

November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.”)
November 24, 1860 ("Though a slight touch, this was the first wintry scene of the season. The rabbits in the swamps enjoy it, as well as you.”)

November 25, 1857 (“[T]he thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of”)

November 28, 1856 ("Sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches... remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon.").
November 29, 1856 ("Begins to snow this morning and snows slowly and interruptedly with a little fine hail all day till it is several inches deep. This the first snow I have seen...")
December 3, 1854 ("The first snow of consequence fell in the evening, very damp (wind northeast); five or six inches deep in morning, after very high wind in the night.”)
December 4, 1859 ("Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.")
December 4, 1860 ("The first snow, four or five inches, this evening."); This evening and night,
December 6, 1852 ("In the evening I see the spearer's light on the river.")

December 6, 1856 ("I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca.")

December 9, 1859 ("The air being very quiet and serene, I observe at mid-afternoon that peculiarly softened western sky, which perhaps is seen commonly after the first snow has covered the earth. . . .Methinks it often happens that as the weather is harder the sky seems softer.")
December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky.")
December 22, 1860 ("the second important snow, there having been sleighing since the 4th, and now ")
December 8, 1850 (“The ground is now covered, - our first snow, two inches deep. . . . I am struck by this sudden solitude and remoteness that these places have acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible! This evening for the first time the new moon is reflected from the frozen snow-crust.”)

December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. . . . In a pensive mood I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.")

December 26,1853 (“This forenoon it snows pretty hard for some hours, the first snow of any consequence thus far. It is about three inches deep.”)
December 26, 1857 ("Snows all day, — first snow of any consequence, three or four inches in all.”)

 December 31, 1859 ("The sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow, now gray and leathery, dry, is covered beneath its cap with pretty large close-set light-brown seeds.")

January 9, 1855 ("Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots . . .the Kalmia glauca var.rosmarinifolia.Very delicate evergreen opposite linear leaves, strongly revolute, somewhat reddish-green above, the blossom-buds quite conspicuous. . . .The pretty little blossom-buds arranged crosswise in the axils of the leaves as you look down on them.")

January 1, 1852 ("Perhaps the only thing that spoke to me on this walk was the bare, lichen-covered gray rock at the Cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm as in summer")

January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky.")

January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")

January 26, 1852 ("The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);
February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day”).

November 15, 2013

If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

November 14 <<<<<<<<<  November 15  >>>>>>>> November 16

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 15

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

A Season for Muskrat-cabins (the tree sparrow comes from the north)

November 5.


P. M. -- To Hubbard Bathing-Place for shrubs.

Most of the muskrat-cabins were lately covered by the flood, but now that it has gone down in a great measure, leaving the cranberries stranded amid the wreck of rushes, reeds, grass, etc., I notice that they have not been washed away or much injured, as a heap of manure would have been, they are so artificially constructed.

Moreover, for the most part they are protected, as well as concealed, by the button-bushes, willows, or weeds about them.

What exactly are they for?

This is not their breeding season.

I think that they are merely an artificial bank, an air-chamber near the water, houses of refuge.

But why do they need them more at this season than in the summer, it may be asked.

Perhaps they are constructed just before the rise of the water in the fall and winter, so that they may not have to swim so far as the flood would require in order to eat their clams.

I heard some pleasant notes from tree sparrows on the willows as I paddled by.

The buds of the rhodora are among the more conspicuous now, and yet more its seed-vessels, many if not most of which are not yet dry, but purplish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 5, 1853

Most of the muskrat-cabins were lately covered by the flood, but I notice that they have not been washed away or much injured they are so artificially constructed. What exactly are they for? so that they may not have to swim so far as the flood would require in order to eat their clams? See September 20, 1855 ("Open a new and pretty sizable muskrat-house with no hollow yet made in it. "); September 26, 1857 ("I see musquash-houses"); October 15, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. Some, it is true, are still rising. They line the river all the way. "); October 16, 1859 ("I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores . .So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia and flags.") October 18, 1852 ("A few muskrat houses are going up abrupt and precipitous on one side sloped on the other I distinguish the dark moist layer of weeds deposited last night on what had dried in the sun."): November 2, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses are mostly covered by the rise of the river! — not a very unexpected one either"); November 4, 1855 ("Many new muskrat-houses have been erected this wet weather."); November 7, 1855 ("Opened a muskrat-house nearly two feet high, but there was no hollow to it. Apparently they do not form that part yet."); November 11, 1855 ("The bricks of which the muskrat builds his house are little masses or wads of the dead weedy rubbish on the muddy bottom, which it probably takes up with its mouth. It consists of various kinds of weeds, now agglutinated together by the slime and dried confervae threads, utricularia, hornwort, etc., — a streaming, tuft-like wad. The building of these cabins appears to be coincident with the commencement of their clam diet, for now their vegetable food, excepting roots, is cut off.”); November 15, 1859 ("I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light."); ;November 16, 1852 ("Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are quite conspicuous half a mile distant, and are of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape."); December 3, 1853 ("I see that muskrats have not only erected cabins, but, since the river rose, have in some places dug galleries a rod into the bank,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

I  heard some pleasant notes from tree sparrows on the willows as I paddled by. See November 4, 1860 ("White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. . . .To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.")

The Light of the Moon.

September 21.

Sunday.

It is remarkably dry weather.

The neighbors' wells are failing.

The watering-places for cattle in pastures, though they have been freshly scooped out, are dry.

People have to go far for water to drink, and then drink it warm.

The river is so low that rocks which are rarely seen show their black heads in mid-channel.

I saw one which a year or two ago upset a boat and drowned a girl.

You see the nests of the bream on the dry shore.

I perceive that many of the leaves of shrub oaks and other bushes have been killed by the severe frosts of last week, before they have got ripe and acquired the tints of autumn, and they now look as [if] a fire had run through them, dry and crispy and brown.

So far from the frost painting them, it has withered them.

I notice new cabins of the muskrats in solitary swamps.

The chestnut trees have suffered severely from the drought; already their leaves look withered.

Moonlight is peculiarly favorable to reflection.

It is a cold and dewy light in which the vapors of the day are condensed, and though the air is obscured by darkness, it is more clear.

Lunacy must be a cold excitement, not such insanity as a torrid sun on the brain would produce.

In Rees's Cyclopedia it is said, “The light of the moon, condensed by the best mirrors, produces no sensible heat upon the thermometer.”

I see some cows on the new Wheeler's Meadow, which a man is trying to drive to certain green parts of the meadow next to the river to feed, the hill being dried up, but they seem disinclined and not to like the coarse grass there, though it is green. And now one cow is steering for the edge of the hill, where is some greenness. 

I suppose that herds are attracted by a distant greenness, though it may be a mile or more off.  I doubt if a man can drive his cows to that part of their pasture where is the best feed for them, so soon as they will find it for themselves. 

The man tries in vain to drive them to the best part of the meadow. As soon as he is gone, they seek their own parts.

The light of the moon, sufficient though it is for the pensive walker, and not disproportionate to the inner light we have, is very inferior in quantity and intensity to that of the sun.

The Cyclopedia says that Dr. Hooke has calculated that “it would require 104,368 full moons to give a light and heat equal to that of the sun at noon, and Dr. Smith says, “The light of the full moon is but equal to a 90,900th part of the common light of the day, when the sun is hidden by a cloud."

But the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she sends us, but also by her influence on the earth. No thinker can afford to overlook the influence of the moon any more than the astronomer can. “The moon gravitates towards the earth, and the earth reciprocally towards the moon.” This statement of the astronomer would be bald and meaningless, if it were not in fact a symbolical expression of the value of all lunar influence on man.

Even the astronomer admits that “the notion of the moon's influence on terrestrial things was confirmed by her manifest effect upon the ocean,” but is not the poet who walks by night conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence, in which the ocean within him overflows its shores and bathes the dry land? '

Has he not his spring-tides and his neap-tides, the former sometimes combining with the winds of heaven to produce those memorable high tides of the calendar which leave their marks for ages, when all Broad Street is submerged, and incalculable damage is done to the ordinary shipping of the mind?

Burritt in his “Geography of the Heavens" says, “The quantity of light which we derive from the Moon when full, is at least three hundred thousand times less than that of the Sun." This is M. Bouguer's inference as stated by Laplace. Professor Leslie makes it one hundred and fifty thousand times less, older astronomers less still.

Rees says: “It is remarkable, that the moon during the week in which she is full in harvest, rises sooner after sun-setting than she does in any other full moon week in the year. By doing so she affords an immediate supply of light after sunset, which is very beneficial to the farmers for reaping and gathering in the fruits of the earth; and therefore they distinguish this full moon from all the others in the year, by calling it the harvest moon.” Howitt places the Harvest Moon in August.

The retirement in which Green has lived for nearly eighty years in Carlisle is a retirement very different from and much greater than that in which the pioneer dwells at the West; for the latter dwells within sound of the surf of those billows of migration which are breaking on the shores around him, or near him, of the West, but those billows have long since swept over the spot which Green inhabits, and left him in the calm sea.

There is somewhat exceedingly pathetic to think of in such a life as he must have lived, with no more to redeem it, — such a life as an average Carlisle man may be supposed to live drawn out to eighty years.

And he has died, perchance, and there is nothing but the mark of his cider-mill left.

Here was the cider-mill, and there the orchard, and there the hog-pasture; and so men lived, and ate, and drank, and passed away, — like vermin.

Their long life was mere duration.

As respectable is the life of the woodchucks, which perpetuate their race in the orchard still.

That is the life of these select men (!) spun out.

They will be forgotten in a few years, even by such as themselves, like vermin.

They will be known only like Kibbe, who is said to have been a large man who weighed two hundred and fifty, who had five or six heavy daughters who rode to Concord meeting house on horseback, taking turns,-they were so heavy that only one could ride at once.

What, then, would redeem such a life? We only know that they ate, and drank, and built barns, and died and were buried, and still, perchance, their tombstones cumber the ground.

But if I could know that there was ever entertained over their cellar-hole some divine thought, which came as a messenger of the gods, that he who resided here acted once in his life from a noble impulse, rising superior to his grovelling and penurious life, if only a single verse of poetry or of poetic prose had ever been written or spoken or conceived here beyond a doubt, I should not think it in vain that man had lived here.

It would to some extent be true then that God had lived here.

That all his life he lived only as a farmer as the most valuable stock only on a farm — and in no moments as a man!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 21, 1851

I notice new cabins of the muskrats in solitary swamps. See October 16, 1859 ("I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores. . . .an important and suggestive sight, . . . For thirty years I have annually observed, about this time or earlier, the freshly erected winter lodges of the musquash along the riverside, . . .So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia and flags.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

And now one cow is steering for the edge of the hill, where is some greenness. See September 27, 1851 ("The pastures are so dry that the cows have been turned on to the meadow, but they gradually desert it, all feeding one way."); October 5, 1856 ("I think I would rather watch the motions of these cows in their pasture for a day, which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing, — watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully.") See also September 6, 1859 ("Hear the sounds nowadays — the lowing, tramp, and calls of the drivers — of cows coming down from up-country."); September 20, 1852 ("Droves of cattle have for some time been coming down from up-country")

Moonlight is peculiarly favorable to reflection. See August 5, 1851 ("With the coolness and the mild silvery light . . . Reflection is more possible. I am sobered by the moonlight. I bethink myself.")

Is not the poet who walks by night conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence, in which the ocean within him overflows. See September 3, 1852 ("I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts, or what is due to the influence of the moon, from the current distractions and fluctuations. The winds which the sun has aroused go down at evening, and the lunar influence may then perchance be detected. ")

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Light of the Moon.

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