A Book of the Seasons: Gossamer Days ( Why should this day be so distinguished?)

There are very few phenomena 

which can be described indifferently 

as occurring at different seasons of the year.

Henry Thoreau November 3, 1853 

Looking westward now

I see against the sunlight –

gossamer waving!

 November 3, 1857

All this is distinct

to an observant eye yet

unnoticed by most.

November 3, 1861

September 29. Looking toward the sun, some fields reflect a light sheen from low webs of gossamer which thickly cover the stubble and grass. September 29, 1858

October. 14.  There is a very little gossamer, mostly blowing off in large loops from the south side the bridge, the loose end having caught. I also see it here and there stretched across lanes from side to side, as high as my face. October 14, 1857

October 16. The lespedezas stand like frost-covered wands, and now hoary goldenrods and some bright-red blackberry vines amid the tawny grass are in harmony with the rest; and if you sharpen and rightly intend your eye you see the gleaming lines of gossamer (stretching from stubble to stubble over the whole surface) which you are breaking. How cheerful these cold but bright white waving tufts! October 16, 1859

October 17. A fine Indian-summer afternoon. There is much gossamer on the button-bushes, now bare of leaves, and on the sere meadow-grass, looking toward the sun, in countless parallel lines, like the ropes which connect the masts of a vessel.  October 17, 1855 

October 18. To-day my shoes are whitened with the gossamer which I noticed yesterday on the meadow-grass. October 18, 1855

October 19.   Indian-summer-like and gossamer. October 19, 1860

October 20. Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line.  October 20, 1856

October 20. Flocks of this gossamer, like tangled skeins, float gently through the quiet air as high as my head, like white parachutes to unseen balloons.  October 20, 1858

October 26. I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhere. October 26, 1854 

October 31. It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon . . . .  I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day. I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem or rush to another, sometimes seven or eight feet distant, horizontally and only four or five inches above the water. When I look further, I find that they are everywhere and on everything . . .They are so abundant that they seem to have been suddenly produced in the atmosphere by some chemistry, spun out of air I know not for what purpose . . . These gossamer lines are not visible unless between you and the sun. We pass some black willows, now of course quite leafless, and when they are between us and the sun they are so completely covered with these fine cobwebs or lines, mainly parallel to one another, that they make one solid woof, a misty woof, against the sun. They are not drawn taut, but curved downward in the middle, like the rigging of vessels . . . Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumn that this phenomenon is seen, as if that fine vapor of the morning were spun into these webs. According to Kirby and Spence, "in Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn that they are there metaphorically called ' Der fliegender Sommer' (the flying or departing summer)" October 31, 1853

A gossamer day –

As if the year were weaving

her shroud out of light.

October 31, 1853

October 31.  It is a fine day, Indian-summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees . . . the same sort of weather with the most pleasant in November (which last alone some allow to be Indian summer), only more to be expected. October 31, 1858

November 1. It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road, and yet I cannot see them in any other direction, and feel not one. It looks as if the birds would be incommoded. They have the effect of a shimmer in the air. This shimmer, moving along them as they are waved by the wind, gives the effect of a drifting storm of light. It is more like a fine snow-storm which drifts athwart your path than anything else. What is the peculiar condition of the atmosphere, to call forth this activity? If there were no sunshine, I should never find out that they existed, I should not know that I was bursting a myriad barriers. Though you break them with your person, you feel not one. Why should this day be so distinguished? November 1, 1851 

November 1. A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M . . . Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air. November 1, 1860  

November 2. The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones. November 2, 1853

November 3.   Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other.  November 3, 1857 [see November lights, below]

November 7.  Looking west over Wheeler’s meadow, I see that there has been much gossamer on the grass, and it is now revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it. November 7, 1855 

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

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

November 15.  This afternoon has wanted no condition to make it a gossamer day, it seems to me, but a calm atmosphere. Plainly the spiders cannot be abroad on the water unless it is smooth. The one I witnessed this fall was at time of flood. May it be that they are driven out of their retreats like muskrats and snow-fleas, and spin these lines for their support? Yet they work on the causeway, too  November 15, 1853

November 15.  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. November 15, 1858 (see November lights, below)

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

November 19. This is a very pleasant and warm Indian-summer afternoon. Methinks we have not had one like it since October. This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm. My boat I find to be covered with spiders, whose fine lines soon stretch from side to side.  November 19, 1853 

December 20. I see some gossamer on the weeds above the ice. December 20, 1855

---

Gossamer-like snow flakes

November 20, 1857 ("I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.") April 4, 1859 ("There are dark and windy clouds on that side, of that peculiar brushy or wispy character — or rather like sheafs — which denotes wind. They only spit a little snow at last, thin and scarcely perceived, like falling gossamer.")

 

***

November lights

As I stand looking down the hill over Emerson's young wood-lot there, perhaps at 3.30 p. m., 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. November 28, 1856

 

October 16. This clear, cold, Novemberish light is inspiriting. Some twigs which are bare and weeds begin to glitter with hoary light. The very edge or outline of a tawny or russet hill has this hoary fight on it. Your thoughts sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs. October 16, 1859

October 25. In the cool Novemberish air and light we observe and enjoy the trembling shimmer and gleam of the pine-needles. I do not know why we perceive this more at this season, unless because the air is so clear and all surfaces reflect more light; and, besides, all the needles now left are fresh ones, or the growth of this year. Also I notice, when the sun is low, 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. Hers is a cool, silvery light.  October 25, 1858 

November 3.  Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig. November 3, 1857 

November 18.  Much cold, slate-colored cloud, bare twigs seen gleaming toward the light like gossamer, pure green of pines whose old leaves have fallen, reddish or yellowish brown oak leaves rustling on the hillsides, very pale brown, bleaching, almost hoary fine grass or hay in the fields, akin to the frost which has killed it, and flakes of clear yellow sunlight falling on it here and there, — such is November. November 18, 1857

November 22. A thousand bare twigs gleam like cobwebs in the sun. November 22, 1860

See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now
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

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

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

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open.

November 3

November 3, 2014

Colder weather, true November weather, comes again to-night, and I must rekindle my fire, which I had done without of late. I must walk briskly in order to keep warm in my thin coat. 

P. M. — To Annursnack.

I am inclined to think that pignuts fall earlier than mocker-nuts, i. e. the leaves, and that the first are now about fallen (?). Those on Nawshawtuct are bare, but I see a great many hickories of some kind not nearly bare. 

Monroe’s arbor-vitae hedge has fallen. Put it with the white pine. 

The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors. No doubt it delights in bright color, and so has begged for itself a brilliant coat. It is not gathering seeds from the sod, too busy to look around, while fleeing the country. It is wide awake to what is going on, on the qui vive. It flies to some bright tree and bruits its splendors abroad. 

By fall I mean literally the falling of the leaves, though some mean by it the changing or the acquisition of a brighter color. This I call the autumnal tint, the ripening to the fall. 

The only white birch leaves now seen are those lingering green terminal leaves of the 23d, now at last turned yellow, for they are now burnt upward to the last spark and glimmering. Methinks the birch ripens its leaves very perfectly though gradually. 

I should say that that tree which ripened its leaves well, like this, was better suited to the climate than one like the locust and most apples, —which was mostly killed by frost first annually. Perhaps this tells at last on the constitution of the tree, and that variety would be safest to cultivate which matured its leaves best. 

The pitch pine fallen and falling leaves now and for some time have not been bright or yellow, but brown. 

At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open, but even the stems are generally killed. 

I notice that the cows lately admitted to the meadows and orchards have browsed the grass, etc., closely, on that strip between the dry hillside and the wet meadow, where it is undoubtedly sweetest and freshest yet, and where it chances that this late flower the gentian grows. There, too, grows the herbage which is now the most grateful to the cattle. 

Also Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom; yarrow, etc., etc. Much Lycopodium complanatum not open yet. 

Returning, I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common. 

Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. 

The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this. 

Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. They then sounded peculiarly distinct, being but few here and there on a dry and warm hill, bird-like. Yet these seemed to be singing a little louder and in a little loftier strain, now that the chirp of the cricket generally was quenched. 

November 3, 2024

How long we will follow an illusion! On meeting that one whom I call my friend, I find that I had imagined something that was not there. I am sure to depart sadder than I came. Nothing makes me so dejected as to have met my friends, for they make me doubt if it is possible to have any friends. I feel what a fool I am. I cannot conceive of persons more strange to me than they actually are; not thinking, not believing, not doing as I do; interrupted by me. My only distinction must be that I am the greatest bore they ever had. Not me single thought agreed; regularly balking one another. But when I get far away, my thoughts return to them. That is the way I can visit them. Perhaps it is unaccountable to me why I care for them. Thus I am taught that my friend is not an actual person. When I have withdrawn and am alone, I forget the actual person and remember only my ideal. Then I have a friend again. 

I am not so ready to perceive the illusion that is in Nature. I certainly come nearer, to say the least, to an actual and joyful intercourse with her. Every day I have more or less communion with her, as I think. At least, I do not feel as if I must withdraw out of nature. I feel like a welcome guest. Yet, strictly speaking, the same must be true of nature and of man; our ideal is the only real. It is not the finite and temporal that satisfies or concerns us in either case.

I associate the idea of friendship, methinks, with the person the most foreign to me. This illusion is perpetuated, like superstition in a country long after civilization has been attained to. We are attracted toward a particular person, but no one has discovered the laws of this attraction. When I come nearest to that other actually, I am wont to be surprised at my selection. It may be enough that we have met some time, and now can never forget it. Some time or other we paid each other  this wonderful compliment, looked largely, humanly, divinely on one another, and now are fated to be acquaintances forever. 

In the case of nature I am not so conscious of this unsatisfied yearning.

Some oak woods begin to look bare, and even smoky, after their fashion. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 3, 1858


By fall I mean literally the falling of the leaves. See November 11, 1851 (The fall of the year is over.")

Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); Seee also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open, but even the stems are generally killed. See October 10, 1858 ("To Annursnack  . . . I find the fringed gentian abundantly open at 3 and at 4 P. M., — in fact, it must be all the afternoon, — open to catch the cool October sun and air in its low position. Such a dark blue! surpassing that of the male bluebird’s back, who must be encouraged by its presence."); October 12, 1857 ("To Annursnack . . . The fringed gentian by the brook opposite is in its prime.");  November 4, 1853 (“To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late”); November 30, 1856 (“Minot Pratt tells me that he watched the fringed gentian this year, and it lasted till the first week in November..”) See allso A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

Alone, I forget 

the real person – remember 

only my ideal.

Looking westward now.

November 3. 

November 3, 2017

P. M. – To the Easterbrooks moraine via Ponkawtasset-top.

Islands, pale-brown grassy isles, are appearing again in the meadow as the water goes down. 

From this hilltop, looking down-stream over the Great Meadows away from the sun, the water is rather dark, it being windy, but about the shores of the grassy isles is a lighter-colored smooth space. 

Pitch pine needles are almost all fallen.

There is a wild pear tree on the east side of Ponkawtasset, which I find to be four and a half feet in circumference at four feet from the ground.

Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other. 

I see on many rocks, etc., the seeds of the barberry, which have been voided by birds, – robins, no doubt, chiefly. How many they must thus scatter over the fields, spreading the barberry far and wide! That has been their business for a month. 

Follow up the Boulder Field northward, and it terminates in that moraine. As I return down the Boulder Field, I see the now winter-colored — i.e. reddish (of oak leaves) — horizon of hills, with its few white houses, four or five miles distant southward, between two of the boulders, which are a dozen rods from me, a dozen feet high, and nearly as much apart, — as a landscape between the frame of a picture. But what a picture frame! These two great slumbering masses of rock, reposing like a pair of mastodons on the surface of the pasture, completely shutting out a mile of the horizon on each side, while between their adjacent sides, which are nearly perpendicular, I see to the now purified, dry, reddish, leafy horizon, with a faint tinge of blue from the distance. 

To see a remote landscape between two near rocks! I want no other gilding to my picture-frame. There they lie, as perchance they tumbled and split from off an iceberg. What better frame could you have? The globe itself, here named pasture, for ground and foreground, two great boulders for the sides of the frame, and the sky itself for the top! And for artists and subject, God and Nature! Such pictures cost nothing but eyes, and it will not bankrupt one to own them. They were not stolen by any conqueror as spoils of war, and none can doubt but they are really the works of an old master. What more, pray, will you see between any two slips of gilded wood in that pasture you call Europe and browse in sometimes? 

It is singular that several of those rocks should be thus split into twins. Even very low ones, just appearing above the surface, are divided and parallel, having a path between them. 

It would be something to own that pasture with the great rocks in it! And yet I suppose they are considered an incumbrance only by the owner. 

I came along the path that comes out just this side the lime-kiln. 

Coming by Ebby Hubbard’s thick maple and pine wood, I see the rays of the sun, now not much above the horizon, penetrating quite through it to my side in very narrow and slender glades of light, peculiarly bright. It seems, then, that no wood is so dense but that the rays of the setting sun may penetrate twenty rods into it. 

The other day (November 1st), I stood on the sunny side of such a wood at the same season, or a little earlier. Then I saw the lit sides of the tree stems all aglow with their lichens, and observed their black shadows behind. Now I see chiefly the dark stems massed together, and it is the warm sunlight that is reduced to a pencil of light; i. e., then light was the rule and shadow the exception, now shadow the rule and light the exception. 

I notice some old cow-droppings in a pasture, which are decidedly pink. Even these trivial objects awaken agreeable associations in my mind, connected not only with my own actual rambles but with what I have read of the prairies and pampas and Eastern land of grass, the great pastures of the world.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 3, 1857

To the Easterbrooks moraine via Ponkawtasset-top. See June 10, 1853 ("What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?. . . It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s. Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? . . .Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country?")

Looking westward now. See September 18, 1858 ("As we paddle westward, toward College Meadow, I perceive that a new season has come."); October 20, 1854 ("This is the time to look westward.");  November 10, 1858 ("I look out westward across Fair Haven Pond. The warmer colors are now rare . . .  All the light of November may be called an afterglow. ");  November 30, 1853 (" And as we paddled home westward . . . there was more light in the water than in the sky"); December 9, 1856 ("I look over the pond westward. The sun is near setting,. . . The pond is perfectly smooth and full of light.") January 9, 1859 ("As I stand on the pond looking westward toward the twilight sky, a soft, satiny light is reflected from the ice in flakes here and there, like the light from the under side of a bird’s wing.") ;  January 31, 1859 ("When I look westward now to the flat snow-crusted shore, it reflects a strong violet color. ");  February 21, 1854 ("The ice in the fields . . . amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green."); February 29, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach.");   April 30, 1852 ("Far over the woods westward, a shining vane, glimmering in the sun."); May 10, 1853 ("From the hill, I look westward over the landscape. The deciduous woods are in their hoary youth, every expanding bud swaddled with downy webs.") See also  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");  Walking (1861) ("Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him . . . The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild and what I have been preparing to say is that in Wildness is the preservation of the World .") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Sunsets

It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. See  November 1, 1860  ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air."); November 7, 1855 ("gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”); November 11, 1858 ("Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October)."); November 13,1855 (" I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.”); November 15, 1858 ("Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November"); November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm. . . .”);  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.").  Also November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year .")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

To see a remote landscape between two near rocks! See November 1, 1852 ("To see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture. ")

Pitch pine needles are almost all fallen. See November 3, 1858 ("The pitch pine fallen and falling leaves now and for some time have not been bright or yellow, but brown.") See also October 22, 1851 ("The pines, both white and pitch, have now shed their leaves, and the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles."); November 1, 1851 ("The pitch pines show new buds at the end of their plumes.");  November 4, 1857 ("I frequently see a spreading pitch pine on whose lower and horizontal limbs the falling needles have lodged, forming thick and unsightly masses, where anon the snow will collect and make a close canopy.") And A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Pitch Pine. 

Spreading the barberry far and wide! That has been their business for a month. See  May 29, 1858 ("I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the barberry, then."); June 28, 1858 ("I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced"); October 20, 1857 ("The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them."); October 18, 1857 ("I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries.")  February 4, 1856. ("I have often wondered how red cedars could have sprung up in some pastures which I knew to be miles distant from the nearest fruit-bearing cedar, but it now occurs to me that these and barberries, etc., may be planted by the crows, and probably other birds."). Also September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that such seeds as these will turn out to be more sought after by birds and quadrupeds, and so transported by them, than those lighter ones furnished with a pappus and transported by the wind; and that those the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds."); September 23, 1860 ("It is evident, then, that the fox eats huckleberries and so contributes very much to the dispersion of this shrub, for there were a number of entire berries in its dung in both the last two I chanced to notice. To spread these seeds, Nature employs not only a great many birds but this restless ranger the fox.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry

Coming by Ebby Hubbard’s thick maple and pine wood, I see the rays of the sun, now not much above the horizon, penetrating quite through it to my side in very narrow and slender glades of light, peculiarly bright. See November 1, 1857 (" I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood,. . .lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn.") Compare April 29, 1852 ("Coming home over the Corner road, the sun, now getting low, is reflected very bright and silvery from the water on the meadows, seen through the pines of Hubbard's Grove.")

A remote landscape

seen between two near rocks – what 

better picture-frame!

Looking westward now

I see gossamer waving

against the sunlight.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Looking westward now.

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-571103

A Book of the Seasons: November 3

November 3.

Glorious November November The month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs. November The landscape without snow prepared for winter. November The clear, white, leafless twilight, the bright November stars. November Still we behold the inaccessible

beauty around us.

***

The rustling oak leaves

a ripple on the river

cool northerly wind

bare gray limbs and twigs –

the Novembery landscape

from Fair Haven Hill.

November 3, 1852

A remote landscape

seen between two near rocks – what 

better picture-frame!

November 3, 1857

Many white pine cones 

fallen and open with a

few seeds still in them.

November 3, 1853

Looking westward now

I see against the sunlight –

gossamer waving!

 November 3, 1857

All this is distinct

to an observant eye yet

unnoticed by most.

November 3, 1861

November 3, 2014

Birds in russet dress

now flit past like withered leaves

in rustling flocks.

Against the sunlight

now-bare twigs reflect light lke

waving gossamer.

The rustling oak leaves

a ripple on the river

cool northerly wind –

Perfectly distinct

to an observant eye yet

unnoticed by most.

HDT November 3 

A violent easterly storm in the night clears up at noon. November 3, 1861

A warm westerly wind, the sky concealed and a storm gathering. A sober, cloudy afternoon. November 3, 1853

Colder weather, true November weather, comes again to-night, and I must rekindle my fire, which I had done without of late. I must walk briskly in order to keep warm in my thin coat. November 3, 1858

The landscape from Fair Haven Hill looks Novembery, bare gray limbs and twigs in the swamps; and where many young (or shrub) oaks have lost their leaves, you hear the rustling of oak and walnut leaves in the air.    November 3, 1852 

From this hilltop, looking down-stream over the Great Meadows away from the sun, the water is rather dark, it being windy, but about the shores of the grassy isles is a lighter-colored smooth space. November 3, 1857

There is a ripple on the river from the cool northerly wind.   November 3, 1852

Just as the sun is rising, many undoubtedly of the same white-in-tail sparrows described four pages back are flying high over my head west and northwest, above the thin mist, perchance to where they see the sun on the wood-side; with that peculiar shelly note. November 3, 1853

There are two or three tree sparrows flitting and hop ping along amid the alders and willows, with their fine silvery tchip, unlike the dry loud chip of the song sparrow. November 3, 1853

The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors. No doubt it delights in bright color, and so has begged for itself a brilliant coat. It is not gathering seeds from the sod, too busy to look around, while fleeing the country. It is wide awake to what is going on, on the qui vive. It flies to some bright tree and bruits its splendors abroad. November 3, 1858

I see on many rocks, etc., the seeds of the barberry, which have been voided by birds, – robins, no doubt, chiefly. How many they must thus scatter over the fields, spreading the barberry far and wide! That has been their business for a month. November 3, 1857

I think it was the 27th October I saw a goldfinch. November 3, 1853

Heard a bluebird about a week ago.November 3, 1853

I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common. November 3, 1858

Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. November 3, 1858

The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this. November 3, 1858

By fall I mean literally the falling of the leaves, though some mean by it the changing or the acquisition of a brighter color. This I call the autumnal tint, the ripening to the fall. November 3, 1858

The plants are sere. November 3, 1852

The shrub oak plain is all withered.   November 3, 1852

 It is the month of withered oak leaves.  November 3, 1852

The andromeda is a dull brown like the shrub oak leaves now.   November 3, 1852

Some oak woods begin to look bare, and even smoky, after their fashion. November 3, 1858

I am inclined to think that pignuts fall earlier than mocker-nuts, i. e. the leaves, and that the first are now about fallen (?). Those on Nawshawtuct are bare, but I see a great many hickories of some kind not nearly bare. November 3, 1858

Monroe’s arbor-vitae hedge has fallen. Put it with the white pine. November 3, 1858

Pitch pine needles are almost all fallen. November 3, 1857

The pitch pine fallen and falling leaves now and for some time have not been bright or yellow, but brown. November 3, 1858

I see many white pine cones fallen and open, with a few seeds still in them. November 3, 1853

The only white birch leaves now seen are those lingering green terminal leaves of the 23d, now at last turned yellow, for they are now burnt upward to the last spark and glimmering.  November 3, 1858

Now is the time to observe the radical leaves of many plants, which put forth with springlike vigor and are so unlike the others with which we are familiar that it is sometimes difficult to identify them. November 3, 1853

Since the change and fall of the leaf a remarkable prominence is given to the evergreens; their limits are more distinctly defined as you look at distant woods, since the leaves of deciduous trees ceased to be green and fell.  November 3, 1853

Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. . . . I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other. November 3, 1857

It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. November 3, 1857

Follow up the Boulder Field northward, and it terminates in that moraine. As I return down the Boulder Field, I see the now winter-colored — i.e. reddish (of oak leaves) — horizon of hills, with its few white houses, four or five miles distant southward, between two of the boulders, which are a dozen rods from me, a dozen feet high, and nearly as much apart, — as a landscape between the frame of a picture. But what a picture frame! These two great slumbering masses of rock, reposing like a pair of mastodons on the surface of the pasture, completely shutting out a mile of the horizon on each side, while between their adjacent sides, which are nearly perpendicular, I see to the now purified, dry, reddish, leafy horizon, with a faint tinge of blue from the distance. November 3, 1857

To see a remote landscape between two near rocks! I want no other gilding to my picture-frame.  November 3, 1857

It is singular that several of those rocks should be thus split into twins. Even very low ones, just appearing above the surface, are divided and parallel, having a path between them. November 3, 1857

I notice some old cow-droppings in a pasture, which are decidedly pink. Even these trivial objects awaken agreeable associations in my mind, connected not only with my own actual rambles but with what I have read of the prairies and pampas and Eastern land of grass, the great pastures of the world.
November 3, 1857

At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open, but even the stems are generally killed. November 3, 1858

Also Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom; yarrow, etc., etc.  November 3, 1858

To-day I see yarrow, very bright; red clover; autumnal dandelion; the silvery potentilla, and one Canadensis and the Norvegica; and a dandelion; Veronica arvensis; and gnawel; one Aster lcevis (!) by the Hosmer Ditch; and, to my surprise, that solidago of September 11th, still showing some fresh yellow petals and a very fresh stem and leaves . . . Also S. nemoralis by roadside . . . It may outlast it, as the A. puniceus does the A. undulatus, though, by the way, I saw a very fresh A. undulatus this afternoon. November 3, 1853

The Aster puniceus by brook is still common, though the worse for the wear, — low and more recent ones, — so that this, though a week ago it was less prevalent, must be set down as later than the A. undulatus. It bears the frosts much better, though it has been ex posed to more severe ones from its position. And with this must be included that smooth and narrower- leaved kind, in other respects the same, one of which, at least, I think I have called A. longifolius. They seem to run into each other. I am inclined to think it a smoother A. longifolius. November 3, 1853

Only one or two butter-and-eggs left.   November 3, 1852

Much Lycopodium complanatum not open yet. November 3, 1858

Shepherd's-purse abundant still in gardens.   November 3, 1852

Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. They then sounded peculiarly distinct, being but few here and there on a dry and warm hill, bird-like. Yet these seemed to be singing a little louder and in a little loftier strain, now that the chirp of the cricket generally was quenched. November 3, 1858

Coming by Ebby Hubbard’s thick maple and pine wood, I see the rays of the sun, now not much above the horizon, penetrating quite through it to my side in very narrow and slender glades of light, peculiarly bright. It seems, then, that no wood is so dense but that the rays of the setting sun may penetrate twenty rods into it. November 3, 1857

The other day (November 1st), I stood on the sunny side of such a wood at the same season, or a little earlier. Then I saw the lit sides of the tree stems all aglow with their lichens, and observed their black shadows behind. November 3, 1857

Now I see chiefly the dark stems massed together, and it is the warm sunlight that is reduced to a pencil of light; i. e., then light was the rule and shadow the exception, now shadow the rule and light the exception. November 3, 1857

In the Heywood Brooks, many young pollywogs two inches long and more; also snails on the bottom.   November 3, 1852

Very small pollywogs in pools, one and a half or two inches long.  November 3, 1853

I find these water-bugs, large and small, not on the surface, but apparently sheltered amid the weeds, going into winter quarters.   November 3, 1852

A small gyrinus in Nut Meadow Brook.  November 3, 1853

At Andromeda Pond, started nine black ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me.   November 3, 1852

The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm.  November 3, 1852

There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.  November 3, 1853

I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me, though at the risk of endless iteration. I milk the sky and the earth.  November 3, 1853

All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.  November 3, 1861

November 3, 2017

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago  (nannyberry)

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch 

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

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

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

 

November 3, 2014

November 3, 2017

February 4, 1856. ("I have often wondered how red cedars could have sprung up in some pastures which I knew to be miles distant from the nearest fruit-bearing cedar, but it now occurs to me that these and barberries, etc., may be planted by the crows, and probably other birds.")

 April 24, 1859 ("There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season.")

 April 29, 1852 ("Coming home over the Corner road, the sun, now getting low, is reflected very bright and silvery from the water on the meadows, seen through the pines of Hubbard's Grove.")

 May 29, 1858 ("I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the barberry, then.")

 June 28, 1858 ("I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced")

October 18, 1857 ("I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries.") 

October 20, 1857 ("The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them.")

October 24, 1853 ("Some hickories bare, some with rich golden-brown leaves.")

October 24, 1858  ("Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least. ")

October 26, 1857 ("Spring is brown; summer, green; autumn, yellow; winter, white; November, gray.")

October 28, 1852 ("November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs.")

October 28, 1852 ("Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June 1st to October 1st, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn.") 

October 28, 1857 ("All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before. It was but a transient ray, and there was no sunshine afterward, but the intensity of the light was surprising and impressive.")
November 1, 1851 ("It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs")
November 1, 1852 ("The birches have almost all lost their leaves.")
November 1, 1852 ("To see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture.")November 1, 1853 ("The white birch seeds begin to fall and leave the core bare. I now hear a robin, and see and hear some noisy and restless jays, and a song sparrow chips faintly. As I return, I notice crows")
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 (" I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf. ")
November 2, 1857 ("There are no fresh — or blue — fringed gentians by the swamp-side by Bateman’s now.")

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 n the woods, more yellow and brown specked in the open places.")

November 2, 1858 ("In sprout-lands some young birches are still rather leafy and bright-colored.")

 

 

November 4, 1851 ("It is truly a raw and gusty day . . . The jays with their scream are at home in the scenery.")

November 4, 1853 ("To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late. ")

November 4, 1855  ("I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September.")

 November 4, 1860 ("To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago.")

November 5, 1853 (" I heard some pleasant notes from tree sparrows on the willows as I paddled by.")

November 5, 1855 (“I see the shepherd’s-purse, hedge-mustard, and red clover, — November flowers.")

November 5, 1855 ("The brightness of the foliage generally ceased pretty exactly with October. The still bright leaves which I see as I walk along the river edge of this swamp are birches, clear yellow at top; high blueberry, some very bright scarlet red still; some sallows; Viburnum nudum, fresh dark red; alder sprouts, large green leaves")

November 5, 1860 ("The only sounds I hear are the notes of the jays.")

November 7, 1855 ("The white birches lose their lower leaves first, and now their tops show crescents or cones of bright-yellow (spiring flames) leaves, some of the topmost even green still.")

November 7, 1855 ("gossamer on the grass. . . revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it.”)
November 7, 1858 (" I can find no fringed gentian, blue, near Bateman’s Pond.")
November 8, 1857 ("How silently and unobserved by most do these changes take place!.")
November 10, 1858 ("Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost.")
November 11, 1852 ("Did Harris call the water-bug Gyrinus to-day?")

November 11, 1858 ("At Nut Meadow Brook, two black ducks, which rise black between me and the sun, but, when they have circled round to the east, show some silvery sheen on the under side of their wings.")

November 11, 1858 ("Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October).")
November 11, 1859 ("A flock of goldfinches on the top of a hemlock, — as if after its seeds?")

November 13, 1855 ("From Fair Haven Hill the air is clear and fine-grained, and now it is a perfect russet November landscape.”
November 13, 1855 ("See the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.”)

November 15, 1858 ("Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November")

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 ("About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling.")

November 18, 1858  ("Some mocker-nuts, and I think some hickories, on Conantum are not yet bare. Their withered leaves hold on almost like the oaks. Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts.  ")

November 19, 1858 ("The lambkill and water andromeda are turned quite dark red where much exposed; in shelter are green yet. ")
November 19, 1853 (“This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm.”)
November 20, 1857 (Though there is very little cloud, I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.")
November 25, 1853 ("There is first the clean light-reflecting russet earth, the dark-blue water, the dark or dingy green evergreens, the dull reddish-brown of young oaks and shrub oaks, the gray of maples and other leafless trees, and the white of birch stems.”) 

November 25, 1858 ("You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, after walking in the shade or on looking round from a height, to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines, especially pitch pines, or the withered oak leaves, through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest.")
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 30, 1856 ("Minot Pratt tells me that he watched the fringed gentian this year, and it lasted till the first week in November.")

November 3, 2022

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 © 2009-2016