A Book of the Seasons: November 27 (short days, shore ice, shrub oak, acorns and pignuts, lycopodium and other wintergreen plants, barren earth, bright stars)

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 27

The bare barren earth

    cheerless without ice and snow  –   

but how bright the stars.

November 27, 1853

November 27, 2021

Almost an Indian-summer day.  November 27, 1852

On the 22d the ground was white with snow for a few hours only. Yet, though you saw no more of it generally the latter part of that day, I still see some of it in cold, wet, shaded places, as amid andromeda and cranberry vines. November 27, 1859

There is a little ice along most of the shore throughout the day. November 27, 1855

That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle . . . is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories. November 27, 1857

It reminds me . . . that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside. November 27, 1857

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. November 27, 1857

Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra.  November 27, 1857

The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut. November 27, 1857

I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall. November 27, 1852

I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base. November 27, 1858

The shrub oaks and the sprouts make woods you can look down on. They are now our rustling gardens. November 27, 1852

This wood-lot, especially at the northwest base of the hill, is extensively carpeted with the Lycopodium complanatum and also much dendroideum. November 27, 1859

I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of .a fresh, shining green. November 27, 1853

Chimaphila umbellata. November 27, 1859  [pipsissewa, or “wintergreen.”] 

Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now November 27, 1853

To Colburn Farm wood-lot north of C. Hill. I traverse this wood-lot back and forth by the lines cut by those who have lotted it off. Thus I scare up the partridges in it . . . there are few wood-lots of this size which have not some in them at present. November 27, 1859

Take a turn down the river.  November 27, 1856 

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

There is little now to be heard along the river but the sedge rustling on the brink. November 27, 1855

A painted tortoise sinking to the bottom.  November 27, 1856 

And apparently tree sparrows along the shore. November 27, 1856 

Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it.  November 27, 1857

This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. November 27, 1858

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

It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers. 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. How bright they are now by contrast with the dark earth! November 27, 1853

*****

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

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

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

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

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

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

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

November 27, 2021

April 19, 1856 (“I notice acorns sprouted.”)

April 29, 1852 ("The acorns among the leaves are sprouted, the shells open and the blushing (red) meat exposed at the sprout end, where the sprout is already turning toward the earth.”)

May 12, 1859 ("My red oak acorns have sent down long radicles underground.”) 

May 29, 1859 ("Coming out of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery today, where I had just been to deposit the corpse of a man, I pick up an oak tree three inches high with the acorn attached.")

September 12, 1854 ("[White oak acorns] are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them")

September 18, 1858 ("The small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately.") 

September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

October 7, 1860 ("I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. . . . Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted.”); 

October 17,1857 (“Glossy-brown white oak acorns strew the ground thickly, many of them sprouted. How soon they have sprouted!”);

October 16, 1859 ("All the Lycopodium complanatum I see to-day has shed its pollen.")

October 30, 1853 ("Coarse, rustling, light-colored withered grasses skirt the river and the wood-side.")
November 1, 1852 ("In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month.") 
November 1, 1855.("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any. ")

November 2, 1853 ("The shrub oak cups which I notice to-day have lost their acorns.")

November 2, 1853 ("I have not seen a flock of small birds,. . . for about a fortnight. There is now no sound of early birds on the leafless trees and bushes -- willows and alders -- along this watercourse")

November 4, 1855 ("The river-brink — at a little distance at least — is now all sere and rustling.")

November 7, 1855 ("I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk”) 

November 7, 1855 ("Birds are pretty rare now. I hear a few tree sparrows in one place on the trees and bushes near the river, — a clear, chinking chirp and a half-strain...”)

November 9, 1855 ("See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still!”)

November 10, 1858 ("Hearing in the oak and near by a sound as if some one had broken a twig, I looked up and saw a jay pecking at an acorn. There were several jays busily gathering acorns on a scarlet oak")

November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.”)

November 11, 1855 ("The water is smooth. I see the reflections, not only of the wool-grass, but the. . . the coarse rustling sedge, now completely withered (and hear it pleasantly whispering)")

November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October.")

November 12, 1851 ("I hear no sound of any bird now at night, but sometimes some creature stirring, a rabbit, or skunk, or fox, betrayed now by the dry leaves which lie so thick and light")

November 13, 1857 ("How speedily the night comes on now!. . .in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended.")

November 14, 1857 ("I feel the crunching sound of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet")

November 14, 1858 ("This strong and cutting northwest wind makes the oak leaves rustle dryly enough to set your heart on edge.")

November 15, 1858 ("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)")
November 16, 1858 ("the lycopodium dendroideum, complanatum, and lucidulum, and the terminal shield fern are also very interesting.")

 November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”)

November 17, 1858 ("Lycopodium dendroideum . . .was apparently in its prime yesterday);

November 17, 1858 ("It would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season.")

November 18, 1857 ("I hear the dry rustling of seedy rattlesnake grass in the wind, a November sound, within a rod of me.")

November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”) 

November 20, 1857 (“The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring.”)

November 20, 1853 ("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 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find the river skimmed over in some places, and Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over, though commonly there is scarcely any ice to be observed along the shores.")

November 24, 1860 ("I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, though everyone is sprouted, . . . each with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth")

November 21, 1850 ("Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future.”)

November 24, 1855 ("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, 1860 ("The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. ")

November 25, 1852 ("At Walden. — I hear at sundown . . . a flock of wild geese going south.")

November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it?") 

November 25, 1859 ("There is a thin ice for half a rod in width along the shore, which shivers and breaks in the undulations of my boat.")
November 25, 1850 ("Ice on the water and winter in the air, but yet not a particle of snow on the ground")

November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")

November 25, 1858 ("Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground.")

November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it? Not only the fingers cease to do their office, but there is often a benumbing of the faculties generally. You can hardly screw up your courage to take a walk when all is thus tightly locked or frozen up and so little is to be seen in field or wood.”)
November 26, 1855 ("The ice next the shore bears me and my boat")

November 26, 1860 ("Better for us is the . . .hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education.")

  

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 28, 1860 ("The rich man's son gets cocoanuts, and the poor man's, pignuts; but the worst of it is that the former never goes a-cocoanutting, and so he never gets the cream of the cocoanut as the latter does the cream of the pignut") 

November 29, 1857 ("Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!”")

November 30, 1857 ("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”)

November 30, 1853 ("I am attracted nowadays by the various withered grasses and sedges, of different shades of straw-color and of various more or less graceful forms.")

December 1, 1856 (“I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all virtue.”)

I love the shrub oak,

its scanty garment of leaves

whispering to me.

December 1, 1856

December 1. 1856 ("The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch")

December 1, 1856 ("Well named shrub oak. Low, robust, hardy, indigenous. Well known to the striped squirrel and the partridge and rabbit. The squirrel nibbles its nuts sitting upon an old stump of its larger cousins.")

December 6, 1856 ("I take to the riverside where the ice will bear. White snow ice it is, but pretty smooth, but it is quite glare close to the shore and wherever the water overflowed yesterday.")

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 7, 1857 ("It is a fair, sunny, and warm day in the woods for the season. We eat our dinners . . .amid the young oaks in a sheltered and very unfrequented place. I cut some leafy shrub oaks and cast them down for a dry and springy seat.")

December 7, 1853 (" In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical, and also, in this grove, the variety obscurum of various forms, . . .like looking down on evergreen trees. And the L. lucidulum of the swamps, forming broad, thick patches of a clear liquid green,. . . not to mention the spreading openwork umbrellas of the L. complanatum, or flat club-moss, all with spikes still. Also the liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-loving) umbellata, with its dry fruit.")

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 7, 1860 ("See, at White Pond . . . a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it.")

January 7, 1857 ("I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms.")

January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.")

November 27, 2021

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 26 <<<<<<<<  November 27 >>>>>>>> November 28

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 27

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

I am pretty sure to scare up partridges in a wood-lot of this size

November 27.

P. M. — To Colburn Farm wood-lot north of C. Hill.

 

Lychopodium, November 27, 2024

I traverse this wood-lot back and forth by the lines cut by those who have lotted it off. Thus I scare up the partridges in it. A dozen long lines four rods apart are cut through it. Walking through these, I am pretty sure to scare up what partridges there are in it, and there are few wood-lots of this size which have not some in them at present. 

Come upon a large ant-hill in the midst of the wood, but no ants on it. It has made an open and bare spot in the woods, ten or twelve feet in diameter. Its mound is partly grassed over, as usual, and trees have been prevented from springing up by the labors of the ants beneath. As this wood is about thirty years old, it may prove that the ant-hill is of the same age! 

On the 22d the ground was white with snow for a few hours only. Yet, though you saw no more of it generally the latter part of that day, I still see some of it in cold, wet, shaded places, as amid andromeda and cranberry vines. 

November 27, 2024

This wood-lot, especially at the northwest base of the hill, is extensively carpeted with the Lycopodium complanatum and also much dendroideum and Chimaphila umbellata. 

The former, methinks, abounds especially in shady and rather moist, and I think old, or rather diseased, and cold(?), woods. It covers the earth densely, even under the thickest white pine groves, and equally grows under birches. It surprises you as if the trees stood in green grass where you commonly see only withered leaves. 

The Greeks and Romans made much of honey be cause they had no sugar; olive oil also was very important. Our poets(?) still sing of honey, though we have sugar, and oil, though we do not produce and scarcely use it. 

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

H D. Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1859

This wood-lot, especially at the northwest base of the hill, is extensively carpeted with the Lycopodium complanatum and also much dendroideum. See November 27, 1853 (" I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of .a fresh, shining green. ");October 16, 1859 ("All the Lycopodium complanatum I see to-day has shed its pollen.");November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October."); November 15, 1858 ("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)");  November 16, 1858 ("the lycopodium dendroideum, complanatum, and lucidulum, and the terminal shield fern are also very interesting."); November 17, 1858 ("Lycopodium dendroideum . . .was apparently in its prime yesterday); November 17, 1858 ("It would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. ");  December 7, 1853 ("I In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical, and also, in this grove, the variety obscurum of various forms, . . .like looking down on evergreen trees. And the L. lucidulum of the swamps, forming broad, thick patches of a clear liquid green,. . . not to mention the spreading openwork umbrellas of the L. complanatum, or flat club-moss, all with spikes still. Also the liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-loving) umbellata, with its dry fruit.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Chimaphila umbellata. [what HDT calls pipsissewa, or “wintergreen.”]   See November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”); November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”)  See also  November 27, 1853 (Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now")

The principal flight of geese is said to have been a few days before the 24th.  See November 20, 1853 ("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 24, 1855 ("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 25, 1852 ("At Walden. — I hear at sundown . . . a flock of wild geese going south."); November 30, 1857 ("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”)

This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected.

November 27. 

Those barren hollows and plains in the neighborhood of Walden are singular places. I see many which were heavily wooded fifteen or thirty years ago now covered only with fine sedge, sweet-fern, or a few birches, willows, poplars, small wild cherries, panicled cornels, etc. 

They need not amount to hollows at all: many of them are glades merely, and all that region is elevated, but the surrounding higher ground, though it may be only five or ten feet higher, will be covered with a good growth. 

One should think twice before he cut off such places. Perhaps they had better never be laid bare, but merely thinned out. We do not begin to understand the treatment of woodland yet. 

On such spots you will see various young trees—and some of them which I have named —dead as if a fire had run through them, killed apparently by frost. 

I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base, and Emerson represents but one form of the fruit. The leaf of this was not very deeply cut, was broad for its length. 

I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. As I now count, the dorsal fin-rays are 9-10 (Girard says 9-11), caudal 17 (with apparently 4 short on each side), anal 3-11, pectoral 11, ventral 1-5. They have about seven transverse dark bars, a vertical dark mark under eye, and a dark spot on edge of operculum. They appear to be the young of the Pomotis obesus, described by Charles Girard to the Natural History Society in April, ’54, obtained by Baird in fresh water about Hingham and Charles River in Holliston. 

I got more perfect specimens than the bream drawn above. They are exceedingly pretty seen floating dead on their sides in a bowl of water, with all their fins spread out. From their size and form and position they cannot fail to remind you of coins in the basin.

The conspicuous transverse bars distinguish them at once. The dorsal fin consists of two parts, the foremost of shorter stiff, spiny rays, the other eleven at least half as long again and quite flexible and waving, falling together like a wet rag out of water. So, with the anal fin, the three foremost rays are short (and spiny, as I see, and one of each of the ventral (according to Girard, and to me). These foremost rays in each case look like slender raking masts, and their points project beyond the thin web of the fin, whose edge looks like the ropes which stretch from masthead to masthead, loopwise. 

The stiff and spiny foremost part of the fins evidently serves for a cut-water which bears the brunt of any concussion and perhaps may serve for weapons of offense, while the more ample and gently waving flexible after part more especially guides the motions of the fish. 

The transverse bars are continued across these parts of the dorsal and anal fins, as the markings of a turtle across its feet or flippers; methinks the fins of the minnows are peculiarly beautiful. 

How much more remote the newly discovered species seems to dwell than the old and familiar ones, though both inhabit the same pond! Where the Pomotis obesus swims must be a new country, unexplored by science. The seashore may be settled, but aborigines dwell unseen only thus far inland. This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. The water which such a fish swims in must still have a primitive forest decaying in it.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1858

I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. See November 26, 1858 (" a great many minnows about one inch long . . . shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch.")

So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base. See September 12, 1854 ("[White oak acorns] are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them"); January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or  rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.");  September 18, 1858 ("the small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately. [The black oak acorns also slightly marked thus.]") also  September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. See September 9, 1856 ("The skin and skull of a panther (Felis concolor) (cougar, catamount, painter, American lion, puma) . . . gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here.").

I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections

November 27. 

Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it; also that the little dipper is not a coot, - but he appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them. Says the little dipper has a bill like a hen, and will not dive at the flash so as to escape, as he has proved. 

Says that a loon can run but little way and very awkwardly, falling on its belly, and cannot rise from the ground. Makes a great noise running on the water before it rises. 

Standing before Stacy's large glass windows this morning, I saw that they were gloriously ground by the frost. I never saw such beautiful feather and fir like frosting. His windows are filled with fancy articles and toys for Christmas and New-Year's presents, but this delicate and graceful outside frosting surpassed them all infinitely.

I saw countless feathers with very distinct midribs and fine pinnae. The half of a trunk seemed to rise in each case up along the sash, and these feathers branched off from it all the way, sometimes nearly horizontally. Other crystals looked like pine plumes the size of life. If glass could be ground to look like this, how glorious it would be! You can tell which shopman has the hottest fire within by the frost being melted off. I was never so struck by the gracefulness of the curves in vegetation, and wonder that Ruskin does not refer to frostwork. 

P. M. – Rode to the kiln and quarry by William Farrar's, Carlisle, and to gorge behind Melvin's. 

The direction of the strata at this quarry is like that of Curly-pate and the Easterbrooks quarries, east-northeast by west-southwest, though the latter are very nearly two miles southeast. 

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]

It may be well to observe it next fall. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut. 

The stratification trends there as at Curly-pate, or perhaps more north and south. 

That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle, with a long slab cover to the trough that leads to it to fend off the feet of cattle that come to drink, is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories and perhaps ash trees. It reminds me of life sometimes in the pasture, — that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside. 

I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections in his “Elements of Drawing,” page 181.* He says the reflection is merely the substance “reversed” or “topsy turvy,” and adds, “Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.”

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1857

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory See November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")

.

Ruskin is wrong about reflections . . .He says . . . 'Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection.' See  November 30, 1853 ("Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky");November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”) ; October 14, 1857 (“[T]he reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition”)

See also, on reading Ruskin, October 6, 1857 (“How much is written about Nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is”); October 29, 1857 (“The love of Nature and fullest perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.”)

Note.  On November 16th HDT wrote Blake:

"Have you ever read Ruskin's books? If not, I would recommend you to try the second and third volumes (not parts) of his “Modern Painters.” I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the vol-umes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc., all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them."

* "If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed."

A turn down the river.

November 27.  

P. M. — Take a turn down the river. 

A painted tortoise sinking to the bottom, and apparently tree sparrows along the shore.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1856

Take a turn down the river.   See December 2, 1856 ("Got in my boat, which before I had got out and turned up on the bank.”)

A painted tortoise . See   November 1, 1855.("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any. ");   November 7, 1855 ("I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk . . .”)  November 9, 1855 ("See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still!”); November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.”); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

Tree sparrows. See November 7, 1855 ("Birds are pretty rare now. I hear a few tree sparrows in one place on the trees and bushes near the river, — a clear, chinking chirp and a half-strain...”);  November 20, 1857 (“The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring.”); and  J..J. Audubon (" It reaches Massachusetts at the approach of winter, and is more frequent in the maritime districts of that State than in the interior, where, however, it is met with in considerable numbers. In the beginning of October, if the weather be cold, the Tree Sparrow is seen among the magnificent elm trees that ornament the beautiful city of Boston and its neighbouring villages; and, like the hardy, industrious, and enterprising people among whom it seems to spend the severe season by choice, it makes strenuous efforts to supply itself with the means of subsistence . . . According to Dr. T. M. BREWER, this is the most common Sparrow found near Boston during the winter, inhabiting in large flocks the low bushes and grass in marshy, sheltered situations, much of the time very quiet and inactive.”)

There is little now to be heard along the river

November 27. 

P. M. — By river to J. Farmer’s.

I told him I saw a mink. He said he would have given me $1.50 and perhaps something more for him. I hear that he gives $1.75, and sells them again at a profit. They are used to trim ladies’ coats with, among other things. 

A mink skin which he showed me was a darker brown than the one I saw last (he says they changed suddenly to darker about a fortnight since); and the tail was nearly all black.

There is little now to be heard along the river but the sedge rustling on the brink. There is a little ice along most of the shore throughout the day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1855

I told him I saw a mink. See November 17, 1855 ("Mink seem to be more commonly seen now . . .”)

I hear that he gives $1.75, and sells them again at a profit. See March 15, 1855 ("He sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. . . .He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars!”)

A Book of the Seasons: November 27.

November 27.

Too cold to paddle –

water freezes the handle 

and numbs my fingers.

The bare barren earth

cheerless without ice and snow –   

but how bright the stars.

November 27, 1853

I find acorns which

have sent a shoot down into

the earth this fall.

November 27, 1852

So new this country

inhabited by species

unknown to science.

November 27, 1858

November 27, 2021

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 © 2009-2019

Now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless.

November 27. 

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. How bright they are now by contrast with the dark earth!

The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk, but the 21st of next month the day will be shorter still by about twenty-five minutes. In December there will be less light than in any month in the year.

It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers.

 

Lychopodium, November 27, 2024

I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of a fresh, shining green.

Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1853

Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless. .See November 1, 1852 ("In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month. "); 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 14, 1858 ("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 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it? Not only the fingers cease to do their office, but there is often a benumbing of the faculties generally. You can hardly screw up your courage to take a walk when all is thus tightly locked or frozen up and so little is to be seen in field or wood. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November Days ; 

How bright [the stars]. See November 13, 1851 ("Just in proportion to the outward poverty is the inward wealth. In cold weather fire burns with a clearer flame."); November 22, 1860 ("I rejoice in the bare, bleak, hard, and barren-looking surface of the tawny pastures, the firm outline of the hills, and the air so bracing and wholesome . . . Summer is gone with all its infinite wealth, and still nature is genial to man. Still he beholds the same inaccessible beauty around him."); January 29, 1854 ("Tonight I feel it stinging cold . . . it bites my ears and face, but the stars shine all the brighter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, It is glorious November weather

The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk, See 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.”); 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.”)

It is too cold to-day to use a paddle. See November 24, 1860 (“Fingers are so benumbed that you cannot open your jack-knife.”)

I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of a fresh, shining green. See note to November 27, 1859 ("This wood-lot, especially at the northwest base of the hill, is extensively carpeted with the Lycopodium complanatum and also much dendroideum and Chimaphila umbellata ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now. See November 16, 1850 (“The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries ?”) ; November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen . . . the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”);    cember 3, 1853 ("The still green Mitchella repens and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

Note "Checkerberry" is another name for American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). See Checkerberry cum Wintergreen. What HDT calls “wintergreen” is Chimaphila umbellata, a/k/a pipsissewa,.See July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”);  November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”)

November 27. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 27

The bare barren earth

    cheerless without ice and snow  –   

but how bright the stars.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The earth is bare, barren and cheerless.

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-531127