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

First snow.

November 15. 

November 9, 2019

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

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1854

First snow. See November 15, 1858 (" A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up.")

 The children greet our

 first snow with a shout when they 

come out at recess.

November 8, 1853 

 See also 

• November 12, 1859 ("The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots.”)
• 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 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 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 26, 1850 ("An inch of snow on ground this morning, our first.")

November 26, 2017

• 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.")
December 5, 1853 ("The river frozen. .. and whitened with snow , which was sprinkled on it this noon'")
• 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 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.”).
• January 13, 1853 ("A drifting snow-storm last night and to day, the first of consequence; and the first sleighing this winter.")

And December 22, 1853 (“A slight whitening of snow last evening, the second whitening of the winter,”); December 22, 1860 ("This evening and night, the second important snow, there having been sleighing since the 4th, and now ") ;January 22, 1854 ("No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first")

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

November 15, 2019

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, First Snow

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

Get yourself therefore a name.

November 15

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

Asked Therien this afternoon if he had got a new idea this summer.

“Good Lord ” says he, “a man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. Maybe the man you work with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds.”

I am pleased to read in Stoever's Life of Linnæus (Trapp's translation) that his father, being the first learned man of his family, changed his family name and borrowed that of Linnæus (Linden-tree-man ) from a lofty linden tree which stood near his native place, “a custom,” he says, “not unfrequent in Sweden, to take fresh appellations from natural objects.”

What more fit than that the advent of a new man into a family should acquire for it, and transmit to his posterity, a new patronymic? Such a custom suggests, if it does not argue, an unabated vigor in the race, relating it to those primitive times when men did, indeed, acquire a name, as memorable and distinct as their characters.

It is refreshing to get to a man whom you will not be satisfied to call John's son or Johnson's son, but a new name applicable to himself alone, he being the first of his kind. We may say there have been but so many men as there are sur names, and of all the John-Smiths there has been but one true John Smith, and he of course is dead.

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

There was one enterprising boy came to school to me whose name was “Buster,” and an honorable name it was. He was the only boy in the school, to my knowledge, who was named.

What shall we say of the comparative intellectual vigor of the ancients and moderns, when we read of Theophrastus, the father of botany, that he composed more than two hundred treatises in the third century before Christ and the seventeenth before printing, about twenty of which remain, and that these fill six volumes in folio printed at Venice? Among the last are two works on natural history and the generation of plants. What a stimulus to a literary man to read his works! They were opera, not an essay or two, which you can carry between your thumb and finger.

Dioscorides (according to Stoever), who lived in the first century after Christ, was the first to inquire into the medicinal properties of plants, “the literary father of the materia medica." His work remains.

And next comes Pliny the Elder, and “by his own avowal (?), his natural history is a compilation from about twenty five hundred (?) different authors."

Conrad Gesner, of the Sixteenth Century, the first botanist of note among the moderns; also a naturalist generally.

In this century botany first “became a regular academical study.”

I think it would be a good discipline for Channing, who writes poetry in a sublimo-lipshod style, to write Latin, for then he would be compelled to say something always, and frequently have recourse to his grammar and dictionary. Methinks that what a man might write in a dead language could be more surely translated into good sense in his own language, than his own language could be translated into good Latin, or the dead language.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1851 

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all. See 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."); August 19, 1851  ("There was one original name well given, Buster Kendal"); 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.")

Theophrastus, the father of botany, . . Dioscorides . . . Pliny the Elder.. .Conrad Gesner. See February 17, 1852 ("If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science.")

Buds and twigs and the mazes made by twigs in the silvery November light

November 15. 

P. M. — To Grackle Swamp. A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. 

November 15, 2023

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. I do not know that I find more than one kind now in that swamp, and of that the fertile fronds are mostly decayed. All lie flat, ready to be buried in snow. 

Slight as the snow is, you are now reminded occasionally in your walks that you have contemporaries, and perchance predecessors. 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. The dog must have been a large one. I see their shadows before me. 

In another place, where the snow is so slight and lifted up on the withered grass that no track is left, I see by the cakes or balls of snow that have dropped from his shoes that a man has passed. This would be known for a man and a dog’s track in any part of the world. 

Five toes in a bundle, somewhat diamond-shape, forming a sort of rosette, are the print of the dog, whether on the sands of Africa or the snow of New England. The track of his master is somewhat more variable, yet reducible within certain limits. 

The Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum appears to be just in bloom in the swamp about the Hemlocks (the regular one (not variety) is apparently earlier), — later than the Lycopodium complanatum, which is done there. 

Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November; also the frost-weed and evergreen ferns. Buds and twigs (like gossamer), and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down and the silver-haired andropogon grass to the first half of November. 

The water andromeda leaves have fallen, and the persistent turned that red brown; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1858

To Grackle Swamp. See March 19, 1858 ("Met Channing and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp")

A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. See November 12, 1859 ("The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots.”); and  note to November 15, 1854 ("The first snow, a mere sugaring which went off the next morning.")

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.  See October 31, 1851 (" I see two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, apparently the Aspidium spinulosum (?) and cristatum (?).. . .They are quite fresh in those cold and wet places and almost flattened down now . . .Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves ");   November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock and various other ferns, one the marginal (?) shield fern and one the terminal shield fern.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Three: Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

I see the track of a fox which was returning from his visit to a farmyard last night, See December 14, 1855("Then I came upon a fox-track made last night, leading toward a farmhouse"); January 21, 1857 ("It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years.")

This would be known for a man and a dog’s track in any part of the world. See November 28, 1858 ("Here is the track of a sportsman and his dog in my secluded path, and probably he preceded me in the summer as well. Yet my hour is not his, and I may never meet him! ")

The Lycopodium denroideum var. obscurum appears to be just in bloom in the swamp about the Hemlocks (the regular one (not variety) is apparently earlier).  See September 24, 1857 ("I find the Lycopodium dendroideum, not quite out, just northwest of this pine grove, in the grass. It is not the
variety obscurum, which grows at Trillium Wood, is more upright-branched and branches round."); Novemberr 7, 1858 ("I see Lycopodium dendroideum which has not yet shed pollen.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November. See November 15, 1859 (“A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it.”);  See also  November 11, 1858 ("Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October)."),  note to November 3, 1857 ("It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Buds and twigs (like gossamer), and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down. See November 28, 1856 ("The sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches, very dense and ascendant with a marked parallelism, they remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon")

The water andromeda leaves have fallen, and the persistent turned that red brown. See November 14, 1858 ("The different colors of the water andromeda in different lights."); November 20, 1857 ("The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees."); 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 15.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 15

A very fine snow, 

just enough to whiten the 

bare spots a little. 

I go to look for 

the evergreen ferns before 

they are covered up. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Buds and twigs and the mazes made by twigs

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581115

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf

November 15. 

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. 

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. 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. 

P. M. — To Holden Swamp and C. Miles Swamp. 

Where the earth has been freshly exposed and so lies light, it is now heaved up and white with asbestos like crystals two or three inches long, which sink and are crunched by my feet. Cold pools in shady woods and under the north sides of walls are now skimmed over. Ice a quarter of an inch thick. I see its large flaky crystals like low undulations, a mosaic of slightly concave, perhaps triangular pieces. The paths whose surface was frozen each night are now thawing and wet. 

The water of the brook beyond Hubbard’s Grove, where it spreads out a little, though not frozen, is clear, cold, and deserted of life. There are no water-bugs nor skaters on it. Rennie, in “ Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” says they are seen all winter on some pools in England, i. e. the Gyrinus natator. 

I see no ants on the great ant-hills, and methinks I have not for three weeks at least. There is but little insect-life abroad now. You wonder what nourishment the cattle can extract from the withered and bleached grass. This cold blast has swept the water-bugs from the pools. 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. 

I break my way into the midst of Holden Swamp to get a specimen of Kalmia glauca leaf. The surface is composed of great porous tussocks, or hummocks, of sphagnum, fifteen or twenty inches high or more, about the stems of blueberry bushes, choke-berry, water andromeda, swamp-pink, spruce, etc., etc., in which my feet sink five or six inches, and my shoes are filled with the rubbish. The water is frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plants. This is the thickest ice I’ve seen. This water was most exposed in the cool swamp. I part the scraggy bushes with my hands and press my way through them. I come out covered with the fragments of lichens and rotten twigs and sphagnum.

Going by my owl-nest oak, I saw that it had broken off at the hole and the top fallen, but, seeing in the cavity some leaves, I climbed up to see what kind of nest it was and what traces of the owls were left. Having shinned up with some difficulty to the top of this great. stump some fifteen or eighteen feet high, I took out the leaves slowly, watching to see what spoils had been left with them. Some were pretty green, and all had evidently been placed there this fall. 

When I had taken all out with my left hand, holding on to the top of the stump with my right, I looked round into the cleft, and there I saw, sitting nearly erect at the bottom in one corner, a little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me. I held my face thus within seven or eight inches of it as long as I cared to hold on there, and it showed no sign of retreating. When I put in my hand, it merely withdrew downward into a snug little nest of hypnum and apparently the dirty-white wool-like pappus of some plant as big as a batting-ball. 

Wishing to see its tail, I stirred it up again, when it suddenly rushed up the side of the cleft, out over my shoulder and right arm, and leaped off, falling down through a thin hemlock spray some fifteen or eighteen feet to the ground, on the hillside, where I lost sight of it, but heard it strike. It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves, as those of the squirrels are. 

At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling since the 8th (say the 12th ?). 

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. The former is linear, about twice as long and two thirds as broad as the latter, alternate mucronate, round-stemmed. The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig, the edges springing from the base of the leaves and decussating like them, so that when the twig is held up to the light it appears alternately thicker and thinner. This plant is commonly seen now with only a few narrow and erect young leaves in a tuft near the end of the twigs, but in many cases older, broader, and nearly horizontal ones, half a dozen of them along the last four or five inches of the twig. The andromeda is most white beneath; the other is more greenish. 

The white willows, which retain many of their leaves even yet, are of a peculiar buff (?) or fawn (?) color. 

Raspberry shoots, too, have their bloom like the thimble-berry, but they are not so rank nor smooth. 

Of the evergreen trees described by Loudon, methinks these it would be worth the while to have on one's premises: — 

• Pinus sylvestris, Scotch pine or fir; the most valuable pine of Europe. Looks like our pitch pine. 
• Pinus Pinaster, which is planted on the sands in France. 
• Abies excelsa, the lofty or Norway spruce fir. 
• Perhaps Picea pectinata, the comb-like-leaved sil ver fir. 
• The Scotch larch, which is not indigenous in Britain, but on the mountains of the middle of Europe. I have, 

Of western American trees: — 

• The Pinus Lambertiana, the gigantic or Lambert's pine, Columbia River, one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high, twenty to near sixty in circumference, allied closely to P. Strobus. 
• Abies Douglassii, northwestern America, one hundred to one hundred and eighty feet high. 
• Picea grandis, great silver fir, northern California, one hundred and seventy to two hundred feet high.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1857


Going by my owl-nest oak . . .   See May 26, 1855 ("At Kalmia Swemp ... At the screech owl’s nest I now find two young slumbering."); May 7, 1855 ("I observe a middling-sized red oak standing a little aslant on the side-hill over the swamp, with a pretty large hole in one side about fifteen feet from the ground, where apparently a limb on which a felled tree lodged had been cut some years before and so broke out a cavity. . . .This is a very fit place for hawks and owls to dwell in, — the thick woods just over a white spruce swamp, in which the glaucous kalmia grows.").

Find plenty of Andromeda Polifolia there, where you can walk dry-shod in the spruce wood, together with Kalmia glauca. See December 6, 1856 ("I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca.")

The Kalmia glauca has fewer leaves now, opposite, glossy above; a very sharp two-edged twig ... See 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.")

.At C. Miles Swamp, I see that the larches have finished falling since the 8th (say the 12th?). See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.") November 5, 1857 ("The pitch pines generally have lost their leaves now, and the larches are fast falling.”); November 16, 1858 (“Probably the larch about fallen.”)