A Book of the Seasons, Geese in Autumn

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

Few live so far outdoors

as to hear the first geese go over.

September 13, 1859

The sonorous, quavering sounds 

of the geese are the voice of this cloudy air . . .

So they migrate . . . 

from latitude to latitude, from State to State,

steering boldly out into the ocean of the air . . .

Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather. 

November 8 , 1857 

Geese in three harrows gradually shift to one – now out of sight.

November 13, 1855 

September 23. When we had put out our bayberry fire, we heard a squawk, and, looking up, saw five geese fly low in the twilight over our heads. We then set out to find our way to Gloucester over the hills, and saw the comet very bright in the northwest. September 23, 1858

October 23. Geese go over Wayland the 17th. October 23, 1858

October 24. A northeast storm, though not much rainfalls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.”  This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago (??), faintly honking. A great many must go over to-day and also alight in this neighborhood. This weather warns them of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. October 24, 1858

October 27.  I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm. Thus the summer winds up its accounts.  October 27, 1857 

November 8.  A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest, or parallel with the general direction of the coast and great mountain-ranges. The sonorous, quavering sounds of the geese are the voice of this cloudy air, – a sound that comes from directly between us and the sky, an aerial sound, and yet so distinct, heavy, and sonorous, a clanking chain drawn through the heavy air. 

I saw through my window some children looking up and pointing their tiny bows into the heavens, and I knew at once that the geese were in the air. It is always an exciting event. The children, instinctively aware of its importance, rushed into the house to tell their parents. 

These travellers are revealed to you by the upward-turned gaze of men. And though these undulating lines are melting into the southwestern sky, the sound comes clear and distinct to you as the clank of a chain in a neighboring stithy. 

So they migrate, not flitting from hedge to hedge, but from latitude to latitude, from State to State, steering boldly out into the ocean of the air. 

It is remarkable how these large objects, so plain when your vision is rightly directed, may be lost in the sky if you look away for a moment, - as hard to hit as a star with a telescope. 

It is a sort of encouraging or soothing sound to assuage their painful fears when they go over a town, as a man moans to deaden a physical pain. The direction of their flight each spring and autumn reminds us inlanders how the coast trends. 

In the afternoon I met Flood, who had just endeavored to draw my attention to a flock of geese in the mizzling air, but encountering me he lost sight of them, while I, at length, looking that way, discerned them, though he could not. 

This was the third flock to-day. Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather. November 8 , 1857 

November 11.  Minott heard geese go over night before last, about 8 P. M. Therien, too, heard them “yelling like anything” over Walden, where he is cutting, the same evening. November 11, 1854

November 13. In mid-forenoon, seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. I at once heard their clangor and rushed to and opened the window. The three harrows were gradually formed into one great one before they were out of sight, the geese shifting their places without slacking their progress. November 13, 1855 

November 13. A large flock of geese go over just before night. November 13, 1858 

November 14. I was remarking to-day to Mr. Rice on the pleasantness of this November thus far, when he remarked that he remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over,  when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way . . . Minott hears geese to-day.  November 14, 1855

 

November 14. This morning it was considerably colder than for a long time, and by noon very much colder than heretofore, with a pretty strong northerly wind. The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days.  November 14, 1857  

November 17

November 18. Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.  November 18, 1854

November 19. Speaking of geese, [Minott]says that Dr. Hurd told a tough story once. He said that when he went out to the well there came a flock of geese flying so low that they had to rise to clear the well-sweep. M. says that there used to be a great many more geese formerly; he used to hear a great many flocks in a day go "yelling" over. November 19, 1855

November 20. Minott said he heard geese going south at day break the 17th, before he came out of the house, and heard and saw another large flock at 10 A. M. Those I heard this afternoon were low and far in the western horizon. I did [not] distinctly see them, but heard them farther and farther in the southwest, the sound of one which did the honking guiding my eyes. I had seen that a storm was brewing before, and low mists already gathered in the northeast. It rained soon after I got home. The 18th was also a drizzling day. Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.  November 20, 1853

November 22. Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also.   November 22, 1853

November 23.  At 5 P. M. I saw, flying southwest high overhead, a flock of geese, and heard the faint honking of one or two. They were in the usual harrow form, twelve in the shorter line and twenty four in the longer, the latter abutting on the former at the fourth bird from the front. I judged hastily that the interval between the geese was about double their alar extent, and, as the last is, according to Wilson, five feet and two inches, the former may safely be called eight feet. I hear they were fired at with a rifle from Bunker Hill the other day.   This is the sixth flock I have seen or heard of since the morning of the 17th , i. e. within a week.  November 23, 1853  

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

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

 November 27. The principal flight of geese is said to have been a few days before the 24th. I have seen none. November 27, 1859

November 30. A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southwest over Goose and Walden Ponds. The former was apparently well named Goose Pond. You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. I suspect they honk more, at any rate they are more broken and alarmed, when passing over a village, and are seen falling into their ranks again, assuming the perfect harrow form. Hearing only one or two honking, even for the seventh time, you think there are but few till you see them. According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky. November 30, 1857 

December 1.  I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day. December 1, 1857 

December 6. 10 P. M. — Hear geese going over. December 6, 1855 

December 15. Saw a small flock of geese go over. December 15, 1852

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of Spring, Geese Overhead

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

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

A Book of the Seasons: November 13 (now there is nothing / november lights)

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 13

Now is there nothing

but the echo of your steps

over frozen ground.

In this cold weather

 your deep inward fires burn

 with a clearer flame.

November 13, 1851

From Fair Haven Hill

the November landscape edged

by blue mountain ridges.

November 13, 1855

Last night was quite cold 

and the ground is white with frost –

Winter approaches.

November 13, 1858 

In early twilight

unseen windows twinkling light

in the horizon.

November 13, 1858

November 13, 2020

See the sun rise or set if possible each day. November 13, 1857

The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. . . . Such, some years, may be our first snow. November 13, 1851

A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. November 13, 1851

The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. November 13, 1851

Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart. A day in which you must hold on to life by your teeth. November 13, 1851

Last night was quite cold, and the ground is white with frost. Thus gradually, but steadily, winter approaches. November 13, 1858

Some rain in the night. November 13, 1857

Rain all day. November 13, 1853

It has rained hard the 11th, 12th, and 13th, and the river is at last decidedly rising. November 13, 1854

Even after all this rain I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences. November 13, 1855

In mid-forenoon, seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. November 13, 1855

A fine clear afternoon after the misty morning and heavy rain of the night. November 13, 1855

A large flock of geese go over just before night. November 13, 1858

From Fair Haven Hill the air is clear and fine-grained, and now it is a perfect russet November landscape . . . edged in the northwest by the blue mountain ridges. November 13, 1855

The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. November 13, 1851

I see snow on the Peterboro hills, reflecting the sun. It is pleasant thus to look from afar into winter. We look at a condition which we have not reached. November 13, 1851

No Indian summer have we had this November. November 13, 1851

Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves, the sheltered dogwood is withered, and even the scarlet oak may be considered as extinguished, and the larch looks brown and nearly bare. November 13, 1858 

One hickory at least (on the hill) has not lost its leaves yet, i. e., has a good many left. So they are a month falling. November 13, 1858 

A white birch (Betula alba) west edge of Trillium Wood, two feet seven inches circumference at three feet.  November 13, 1860

Saw a flock of little passenger birds by Walden, busily pecking at the white birch catkins; about the size of a chickadee; distinct white bar on wings; most with dark pencilled breast, some with whitish ; forked tail ; bright chestnut or crimson (?) frontlet; yellowish shoulders or sack. When startled, they went off with a jingling sound somewhat like emptying a bag of coin. Is it the yellow redpoll? November 13, 1852 

Frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters . . . crickets, and water-bugs. November 13, 1858

Crickets gone into winter quarters. November 13, 1851

But it is the great dormant earth gone into winter quarters here, the earth letting off steam after the summer’s work is over. November 13, 1858

Now is there nothing, . . .nothing but the echo of your steps over the frozen ground, November 13, 1851

Ah, but is not this a glorious time for your deep inward fires? November 13, 1851

In cold weather fire burns with a clearer flame. November 13, 1851

How speedily the night comes on now! November 13, 1857

In twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended. November 13, 1857

Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight. 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

November 13, 2016

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory

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

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

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

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reflections

November 13, 2016

October 25, 1858 (“The light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights”) October 27, 1858 (“the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”)
October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén.")
November 1, 1852 ("In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month.")
November 1, 1851 ("It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs")
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. . .clear white light, which penetrates the woods”)
November 2, 1852 ("This afternoon a three-days' rain-storm is drawing to an end");
November 6, 1858 ("This is another rainy day")
November 7, 1855 ("Gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”)
November 8 , 1857 ("A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. . . .. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest")

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

November 9, 1858 (“We had a true November sunset . . . a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year.”)
November 10, 1859 ("Rain; warm")
November 10, 1853 ("There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow.")
November 10, 1858 ("This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces")

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 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 14, 1855 ("The rain has raised the river an additional foot or more, and it is creeping over the meadows.")

November 14, 1860 ("River two feet four inches above summer level (and at height) on account of rain of 10th and 11th and 12th")

November 14, 1858 ('The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days.")

November 14, 1853 ("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November”)
November 14, 1858 ("It is all at once perfect winter. I walk on frozen ground two thirds covered with a sugaring of dry snow, and this strong and cutting northwest wind makes the oak leaves rustle dryly enough to set your heart on edge.")

November 15, 1858 ("Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November")
November 17, 1858 (“We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. . . . The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. ”)

November 17, 1855 ("Just after dark the first snow is falling, after a chilly afternoon with cold gray clouds”)
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, 1854 ("Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.”)

November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day,")

November 23, 1852 ("There is something genial even in the first snow, and Nature seems to relent a little of her November harshness.”)\
November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”)
November 25, 1857 ("Nature has herself become like the few fruits which she still affords, a very thick-shelled nut with a shrunken meat within.”)

November 27, 1853 ("The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk.")
November 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.")

November 28, 1856 ("Ssunlight 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 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)

November 30, 1857 ("A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. The air is full of geese all flying southwest.")

November 30, 1857 (“You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. . . . According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky.”)

Sparkling windows and

vanes of the village now seen

against the mountains.

November 30, 1852

December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight. . . The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened.")

December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night")
December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”)

January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer.")
January 20, 1852 (“ The days are now sensibly longer,”)

January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever, — so to relate ourselves, for our mind's and body's health, to a universal fact.”)
January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late.")

November 13, 2014

 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 12 <<<<<<<<<  November 13 >>>>>>>> November 14

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

Rain all day.

November 13.

November 13, 2013

Rain all day.


H. D. Thoreau Journal, November 13, 1853

See November 13, 1854 ("It has rained hard the 11th, 12th, and 13th,"); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon."); November 13, 1857 ("Some rain in the night."); November 13, 1858 ("After expecting snow all day, —'though we did not know but it would prove rain,—we looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring."). See also  November 2, 1852 ("This afternoon a three-days' rain-storm is drawing to an end"); November 6, 1858 ("This is another rainy day"); November 8 , 1857 ("A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. . . .. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest") ); November 10, 1859 ("Rain; warm"); November 14, 1855 ("The rain has raised the river an additional foot or more, and it is creeping over the meadows."); November 30, 1857 ("A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. The air is full of geese all flying southwest.")

A hard rain falling. River rising.

November 13.

It has rained hard the 11th, 12th, and 13th, and the river is at last decidedly rising.

On Friday, 10th, it was still at summer level.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1854

What avails you now the fire you stole from heaven?

November 13

To Fair Haven Hill. 

A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. 

Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart. A day in which you must hold on to life by your teeth. You can hardly ruck up any skin on Nature's bones. 

The sap is down; she won't peel. Now is the time to cut timber for yokes and ox-bows, leaving the tough bark on, — yokes for your own neck.  

Finding yourself yoked to Matter and to Time. Truly a hard day, hard times these! 

Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters. 

Friends long since gone there, and you left to walk on frozen ground, with your hands in your pockets. 

Ah, but is not this a glorious time for your deep inward fires? 

And will not your green hickory and white oak burn clear in this frosty air? 

 

Now is not your manhood taxed by the great Assessor? Taxed for having a soul, a ratable soul.

A day when you cannot pluck a flower, cannot dig a parsnip, nor pull a turnip, for the frozen ground! 

What do the thoughts find to live on? What avails you now the fire you stole from heaven? Does not each thought become a vulture to gnaw your vitals? 

No Indian summer have we had this November. I see but few traces of the perennial spring. 

Now is there nothing, not even the cold beauty of ice crystals and snowy architecture, nothing but the echo of your steps over the frozen ground, no voice of birds nor frogs. You are dry as a farrow cow. The earth will not admit a spade.  All fields lie fallow. Shall not your mind? 

True, the freezing ground is being prepared for immeasurable snows, but there are brave thoughts within you that shall remain to rustle the winter through like white oak leaves upon your boughs, or like scrub oaks that remind the traveller of a fire upon the hillsides; or evergreen thoughts, cold even in midsummer, by their nature shall contrast the more fairly with the snow. 

Some warm springs shall still tinkle and fume, and send their column of vapor to the skies.

The walker now fares like cows in the pastures, where is no grass but hay; he gets nothing but an appetite. If we must return to hay, pray let us have that which has been stored in barns, which has not lost its sweetness.  

The poet needs to have more stomachs than the cow, for for him no fodder is stored in barns. He relies upon his instinct, which teaches him to paw away the snow to come at the withered grass.

Methinks man came very near being made a dormant creature, just as some of these animals. The ground squirrel, for instance, which lays up vast stores, is yet found to be half dormant, if you dig him out. 

Now for the oily nuts of thought which you have stored up. 

The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. Perhaps this is owing, not only to the greater clearness of the atmosphere, which brings them nearer, but to the absence of the leaves! They are many miles nearer for it. A little mistiness occasioned by warmth would set them further off and make them fainter. 

I see snow on the Peterboro hills, reflecting the sun. It is pleasant thus to look from afar into winter. We look at a condition which we have not reached. Notwithstanding the poverty of the immediate landscape, in the horizon it is simplicity and grandeur. 

I look into valleys white with snow and now lit up by the sun, while all this country is in shade. This accounts for the cold northwest wind. 

There is a great gap in the mountain range just south of the two Peterboro hills. Methinks I have been through it, and that a road runs there. At any rate, humble as these mountains are compared with some, yet at this distance I am convinced that they answer the purpose of Andes; and, seen in the horizon, I know of nothing more grand and stupendous than this great mountain gate or pass, a great cleft or sinus in the blue banks, as in a dark evening cloud, fit portal to lead from one country, from one quarter of the earth, to another, where the children of the Israelites may file through. 

Little does the New Hampshire farmer who drives over that road realize through what a sublime gap he is passing. You would almost as soon think of a road to wind through and over a dark evening cloud. This prospect of the mountains from our low hills is what I would rather have than pastures on the mountain sides such as my neighbors own, aye, than townships at their base. 

Instead that I drive my cattle up in May, I turn my eyes that way. My eyes pasture there, and straightway the yearling thoughts come back. The grass they feed on never withers, for though they are not evergreen, they're ever blue to me. For though not evergreen to you, to me they're ever blue.

I do not fear my thoughts will die, 

For never yet it was so dry 

as to scorch the azure of the sky. 

It knows no withering and no drought, 

Though all eyes crop, it ne'er gives out. 

My eyes my flocks are; 

Mountains my crops are. 

I do not fear my flocks will stray, 

For they were made to roam the day, 

For they can wander with the latest light, 

Yet be at home at night. 

Just spent a couple of hours (eight to ten) with Miss Mary Emerson at Holbrook's. 

The wittiest and most vivacious woman that I know, certainly that woman among my acquaintance whom it is most profitable to meet, the least frivolous, who will most surely provoke to good conversation and the expression of what is in you. She is singular, among women at least, in being really and perseveringly interested to know what thinkers think. 

She relates herself surely to the intellectual where she goes. It is perhaps her greatest praise and peculiarity that she, more surely than any other woman, gives her companion occasion to utter his best thought. In spite of her own biases, she can entertain a large thought with hospitality, and is not prevented by any intellectuality in it, as women commonly are. 

In short, she is a genius, as woman seldom is, reminding you less often of her sex than any woman whom I know. In that sense she is capable of a masculine appreciation of poetry and philosophy. I never talked with any other woman who I thought accompanied me so far in describing a poetic experience. 

Miss Fuller is the only woman I think of in this connection, and of her rather from her fame than from any knowledge of her. 

Miss Emerson expressed to-night a singular want of respect for her own sex, saying that they were frivolous almost without exception, that woman was the weaker vessel, etc.; that into what ever family she might go, she depended more upon the "clown " for society than upon the lady of the house. Men are more likely to have opinions of their own. 

The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. It is as if, in the fall of the year, a swift traveller should come out of the north with snow upon his coat. So it snows. Such, some years, may be our first snow. 

Just in proportion to the outward poverty is the inward wealth.  In cold weather fire burns with a clearer flame.

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

The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart . . . In cold weather fire burns with a clearer flame. See 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.")

Finding yourself yoked to Matter and to Time. See September 7, 1851 ("I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it"); February 5, 1852 ("Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought, and Time itself run down."); September 24, 1859 ("Great works of art have endless leisure for a background, as the universe has space. Time stands still while they are created."); There was an artist in the city of Kouroo ("As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way"): See also The Maine Woods ("I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me . . . I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me?")

Not a mosquito left. Not an insect. Crickets gone into winter quarters. See November 13, 1858 ("Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs."); See also November 12, 1851 ("The ground is frozen and echoes to my tread. There are absolutely no crickets to be heard now. They are heard, then, till the ground freezes.")  and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

Just spent a couple of hours (eight to ten) with Miss Mary Emerson. Compare November 14. 1851 ("Was introduced to two young women . . .  I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour simply because she has regular features. The society of young women is the most unprofitable I have ever tried.")

The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. See November 9, 1851 ("To-day the mountains seen from the pasture above are dark blue, so dark that they look like new mountains and make a new impression, and the intervening town of Acton is seen against them in a new relation, a new neighborhood.");  March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top . . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Mountains in the Horizon

I see snow on the Peterboro hills, reflecting the sun. See February 21,1855 ("I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them.")

Instead that I drive my cattle up in May, I turn my eyes that way. My eyes pasture there . . . The grass they feed on never withers. See October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? . . . My eyes it is alone that wander to those blue pastures, which no drought affects.")

The cattle-train came down last night from Vermont with snow nearly a foot thick upon it. See February 21, 1855 ("I see a train go by . . . from somewhere up country. . . thickly and evenly crusted with unspotted snow . . . It affected me as when a traveller comes into the house with snow on his coat, when I did not know it was snowing.")

Such, some years, may be our first snow.  See 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.") See also note to November 29, 1856 ("This the first snow.")

November 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  November 13

Now is there nothing

but the echo of your steps

over frozen ground.

In this cold weather

 your deep inward fires burn

 with a clearer flame.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, In cold weather a clearer flame.

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

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