It must be the largest lake in Middlesex.

November 7. 


8 A. M. – To Long Pond with W. E. C. . . .

Close by we found Long Pond, in Wayland, Framingham, and Natick, a great body of water with singularly sandy, shelving, caving, undermined banks; and there we ate our luncheon.

The mayflower leaves we saw there, and the Viola pedata in blossom.

We went down it a mile or two on the east side through the woods on its high bank, and then dined, looking far down to what seemed the Boston outlet (opposite to its natural outlet), where a solitary building stood on the shore.

It is a wild and stretching loch, where yachts might sail, — Cochituate.

It was not only larger but wilder and more novel than I had expected.

In some respects unlike New England.

I could hardly have told in what part of the world I was, if I had been carried there blindfolded.

Yet some features, at least the composition of the soil, were familiar.

The glorious sandy banks far and near, caving and sliding, — far sandy slopes, the forts of the land, where you see  the naked flesh of New England, her garment being blown aside like that of the priests (of the Levites?) when they ascend to the altar.

Seen through this November sky, these sands are dear to me, worth all the gold of California, suggesting Pactolus, while the Saxonville, factory-bell sounds o'er the woods.

That sound perchance it is that whets my vision. . . .

Dear to me to lie in, this sand; fit to preserve the bones of a race for thousands of years to come. And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander. Of thee, O earth, are my bone and sinew made; to thee, O sun, am I brother. It must be the largest lake in Middlesex. To this dust my body will gladly return as to its origin. Here have I my habitat I am of thee.

Dear to me to lie in, this sand;

fit to preserve the bones of a race

for thousands of years to come.

And this is my home,

my native soil; and I am

a New-Englander.

Of thee, O earth,

are my bone

and sinew made.

To thee,

O sun,

am I brother.

To this dust

my body will gladly return

as to its origin.

Here have I

my habitat

I am of thee.

Returned by the south side of Dudley Pond, which looked fairer than ever, though smaller, - now so still, the afternoon somewhat advanced, Nobscot in the west in a purplish light . . .

At Nonesuch Pond, in Natick, we saw a boulder some thirty-two feet square by sixteen high, with a large rock leaning against it, -- under which we walked, -- forming a triangular frame, through which we beheld the picture of the pond. How many white Indians have passed under it! Boulder Pond!

Thence across lots by the Weston elm, to the bounds of Lincoln at the railroad.

Saw a delicate fringed purple flower, Gentiana crinita, between those Weston hills, in a meadow, and after on higher land.
. . .

The sun sets while we are perched on a high rock in the north of Weston.  It soon grows finger cold.

At Walden are three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon, one moon and two sheens further off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1851

It is a wild and stretching loch, where yachts might sail, —Cochituate. See August 24, 1857 ("B. says . . . that Cochituate Pond is only between three and four miles long, or five including the meadows that are flowed, yet it has been called even ten miles long.")

Lake Cochituate was created by the construction, beginning in 1846, of a dam to raise Long Pond, as it was then called , nine feet to create the first public drinking water reservoir for Boston. The Lake consists of three linked kettle ponds in "the Great Sand Plain of Framingham" having a general north and south direction, within the Middlesex County towns of Framingham, Wayland and Natick. The Pond is nearly three and one half miles long , and its greatest breadth about eighteen hundred feet. It naturally discharges into the Sudbury River about 14 miles above Concord where the Sudbury or North River joins the Assabet to form the Concord River. See Annual Report of the Cochituate Water Board For 1851.

And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander. See November 8, 1851 ("When I saw the bare sand at Cochituate I felt my relation to the soil. These are my sands not yet run out. Not yet will the fates turn the glass. This air have I title to taint with my decay. In this clean sand my bones will gladly lie. Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. Here ever springing, never dying, with perennial root I stand; for the winter of the land is warm to me. While the flowers bloom again as in the spring, shall I pine? When I see her sands exposed, thrown up from beneath the surface, it touches me inwardly, it reminds me of my origin; for I am such a plant, so native to New England, me thinks, as springs from the sand cast up from below")

The Weston elm. See October 24, 1852 ("There is an agreeable prospect from near the post-office in the northwest of Sudbury. The southeast (?) horizon is very distant. . .extending to the Weston elm in the horizon. You are more impressed with the extent of earth overlooked than if the view were bounded by mountains.")

Three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon. See October 8, 1851 ("The sun set red in haze,. . .and the moon rose in like manner at the same time. . . . The moon is full."); February 3, 1852 ("The moon is nearly full tonight,"); March 7, 1852 ("To the woods by the full moon."); April 3, 1852 ("I came out mainly to see the light of the moon reflected from the meadowy flood. It is a pathway of light, of sheeny ripples, extending across the meadow toward the moon, consisting of a myriad little bent and broken moons.")

To Cambridge and Boston.

November 7.

To Cambridge and Boston.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1860

See July 26, 1852 ("Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day. Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna"); December 25, 1853 ("When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight through the city down to the end of Long Wharf and look off"); December 22, 1856 ("To Boston and Cambridge."); January 26, 1857 ("At Cambridge and Boston. Saw Boston Harbor frozen over."); March 16, 1857 ("To Cambridge and Boston."); May 3, 1860 ("To Cambridge and Boston. I see at the Aquarium many of my little striped or barred breams.")

 

Now we are left to the hemlocks and pines with their silvery light, to the bare trees and withered grass.

November 7. 

P. M. — To Bateman’s Pond. 

November 7,, 2018

It cleared up this forenoon. I leave my boat opposite the Hemlocks. I see the cold sunlight from some glade between the clouds falling on distant oak woods, now nearly bare, and as I glance up the hill between them. seeing the bare but bright hillside beyond, I think, Now we are left to the hemlocks and pines with their silvery light, to the bare trees and withered grass. 

The very rocks and stones in the rocky roads (that beyond Farmer’s) look white in the clear November light, especially after the rain. We are left to the chickadee’s familiar notes, and the jay for trumpeter. What struck me was a certain emptiness beyond, between the hemlocks and the hill, in the cool, washed air, as if I appreciated even here the absence of insects from it. It suggested agreeably to me a mere space in which to walk briskly. The fields are bleak, and they are, as it were, vacated. 

The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain. But just then I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter. All that is evergreen in me revived at once.

The very moss, the little pine-tree moss, in Hosmer’s meadow is revealed by its greenness amid the withered grass and stubble.

Hard frosts have turned the cranberry vines to a dark purple. 

I hear one faint cricket’s chirp this afternoon. 

Going up the lane beyond Farmer’s, I was surprised to see fly up from the white, stony road, two snow buntings, which alighted again close by, one on a large rock, the other on the stony ground. They had pale-brown or tawny touches on the white breast, on each side of the head, and on the top of the head, in the last place with some darker color. Had light-yellowish bills. They sat quite motionless within two rods, and allowed me to approach within a rod, as if conscious that the white rocks,  etc., concealed them. It seemed as if they were attracted to surfaces of the same color with themselves, — white and black (or quite dark) and tawny. One squatted flat, if not both. Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment.

I find in a swamp witch-hazel buds still opening, for here they are sheltered, but I can find no fringed gentian, blue, near Bateman’s Pond. But Aster undulatus and several golden rods, at least, may be found yet. I see Lycopodium dendroideum which has not yet shed pollen. 

In and about Fox Castle Swamp, lambkill is reddened about as much as ever. Round-leaved cornel is bare.

The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up. 

The Cornus florida by the pond is quite bare; how long? (That at Island still thickly leaved.) So that I can only say that the sheltered C. florida change much later than the scarlet oak generally, and perhaps the former is to be considered later on the whole.

Methinks those scarlet oaks, those burning bushes, begin to be rare in the landscape. They are about Bateman’s Pond, at any rate.

My apple harvest! It is to glean after the husbandman and the cows, or to gather the crop of those wild trees far away on the edges of swamps which have es caped their notice. Now, when it is generally all fallen, if indeed any is left, though you would not suppose there were any on the first survey, nevertheless with experienced eyes I explore amid the clumps of alder (now bare) and in the crevices of the rocks full of leaves, and prying under the fallen and decaying ferns which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. From amid the leaves anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets, but still with the bloom on it and at least as ripe and well kept, if not better than those in barrels, while those which lay exposed are quite brown and rotten. Showing only a blooming cheek here and there between the wet leaves, or fallen into hollows long since and covered up with the leaves of the tree,— a proper kind of packing. I fill my pockets on each side, and as I retrace my steps, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, in order to preserve my balance. And here and there is one lodged as it fell between the bases of the suckers which spring thickly from a horizontal limb. In the midst of an alder clump, covered by leaves, there it lies, safe from cows which might smell it out and unobserved by the husbandman; reserved for me.

It is too late, generally, to look for the handsome ones now. The exposed are decayed or decaying.

Looking southwest toward the pond just before sunset, I saw against the light what I took to be a shad-bush in full bloom, but without a leafet. I was prepared for this sight after this very warm autumn, because this tree frequently puts forth new leaves in October. Or it might be a young wild apple. Hastening to it, I found it was only the feathery seeds of the virgin’s-bower, whose vine, so close to the branches, was not noticeable. They looked just like dense umbels of white flowers, and in this light, three or four rods off, were fully as white as white apple blossoms. 

It is singular how one thing thus puts on the semblance of another. I thought at first I had made a discovery more interesting than the blossoming of apple trees in the fall. This, I thought, which I never saw nor heard of before, must be the result of that wonderfully warm weather about the 19th and 20th of October. It carried me round to spring again, when the shad-bush, almost leafless, is seen waving its white blossoms amid the yet bare trees. The feathery masses at intervals along the twigs, just like umbels of apple bloom, so caught and reflected the western light.

The small beeches are still covered with withered leaves, but the larger are three-quarters bare. 

The Diplopappus linariifolius, which was yellow in the shade, in open and sunny places is purple.

I see the small botrychium leaf in Hosmer’s meadow still firm, but a reddish brown or leather-color. 

Rounding the Island just after sunset, I see not only the houses nearest the river but our own reflected in the river by the Island. From what various points of view and in what unsuspected lights and relations we sooner or later see the most familiar objects! I see houses reflected in the river which stand a mile from it, and whose inhabitants do not consider themselves near the shore.

I pass a musquash-house, apparently begun last night. The first mouthfuls of weeds were placed between some small button-bush stems which stood amid the pads and pontederia, for a support and to prevent their being washed away. Opposite, I see some half concealed amid the bleached phalaris grass (a tall coarse grass), or, in some places, the blue-joint.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1858


Now we are left to the hemlocks and pines with their silvery light, to the bare trees and withered grass. We are left to the chickadee’s familiar notes. See November 7, 1853 (" The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil.")

Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment. See January 2, 1856 ("They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather "); December 24, 1851 ("I see them so commonly when it is beginning to snow that I am inclined to regard them as a sign of a snow-storm.”) and note to November 29, 1859 ("Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unexpectedly. The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.") . Also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting

My apple harvest! See November 4, 1855 ("The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct.");  November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples")

I hear the rustle of the leaves from woods which he goes through.

November 7. 

You will sometimes see a sudden wave flow along a puny ditch of a brook, inundating all its shores, when a musquash is making his escape beneath. He soon plunges into some hole in the bank under water, and all is still again. 

P. M. — To Bateman’s Pond with R. W. E. 

Stedman Buttrick, speaking of R. W. E.'s cow that was killed by lightning and not found for some days, said that they heard a “bellering” of the cows some days before they found her, and they found the ground much trampled about the dead cow; that that was the way with cows in such cases; if such an accident happened to one of their number, they would have spells of gathering around her and “bellering.” 

Minott adorns whatever part of nature he touches; whichever way he walks he transfigures the earth for me. If a common man speaks of Walden Pond to me, I see only a shallow, dull-colored body of water without reflections or peculiar color, but if Minott speaks of it, I see the green water and reflected hills at once, for he has been there. I hear the rustle of the leaves from woods which he goes through. 

This has been another Indian-summer day. Thermometer 58° at noon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1857

I hear the rustle of the leaves from woods which he goes through. See November 6, 1857 ("Minott is a very pleasing figure in nature. He improves every scenery. . ."); September 30, 1857 ("Minott says he is seventy-five years old. "); January 8, 1857 ("Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism "); March 23, 1854 ("Minott confesses to me to-day that he has not been to Boston since the last war, or 1815. . . .”); October 2, 1858 ("Minott told me yesterday that he had never seen the seashore but once, and that was Noddle’s Island in the War of 1812") and  note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.");

The world and my life are simplified .

November 7. 

Another drizzling day, — as fine a mist as can fall. 

November 7, 2021

I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon; my walk or voyage is more suggestive and profitable than in bright weather. 

The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection. 

I am more open to impressions, more sensitive (not calloused or indurated by sun and wind), as if in a chamber still. 

My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. 

The solitude is real, too, for the weather keeps other men at home. 

This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling. 

The sound of a wagon going over an unseen bridge is louder than ever, and so of other sounds. 

I am compelled to look at near objects. 

All things have a soothing effect; the very clouds and mists brood over me. 

My power of observation and contemplation is much increased.

My attention does not wander. 

The world and my life are simplified. 

I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk this dark day. It is long since I have seen one of any species except the insculpta. They must have begun to keep below and go into winter quarters about three weeks ago. 

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. 

Some green-briar leaves still left, a dull red or scarlet, others yellowish; also the silky cornel is conspicuously dull-red, and others yellowish-red. 

And the sallow on river’s brink (not cordata), with a narrow leaf pointed at both ends, shows some clear chrome yellow leaves atop. 

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

The black willows almost everywhere entirely bare, yet the color of their twigs gives them the aspect of the crisp brown weeds of the river’s brink. 

How completely crisp and shrivelled the leaves and stems of the Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre, still standing above the water and grass! 

The river has risen a little more, the North Branch especially, and the pail-stuff which has drifted down it has been carried a few rods up the main stream above the junction. It rises and falls very suddenly, and I was surprised to see the other day a line of sawdust more than a foot above the water’s edge, showing that it had risen to that height and suddenly fallen without my knowledge. 

Opened a muskrat-house nearly two feet high, but there was no hollow to it. Apparently they do not form that part yet. 

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,— a jay at a distance; and see a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights. 

A gray squirrel —as day before yesterday—runs down a limb of an oak and hides behind the trunk and I lose him. A red one runs along the trees to scold at me, boldly or carelessly, with a chuckling, bird like note and that other peculiar sound at intervals, between a purr and a grunt. He is more familiar than the gray and more noisy. What sound does the gray make? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1855

More open to impressions. See June 14, 1853 ("open to great impressions . . .you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye.")

The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects. See August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects”).  Also  December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable"); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist")

The world and my life are simplified. See January 7, 1857 ("I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified.

I see a painted tortoise swimming. See November 1, 1855 ("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any."):  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)

Opened a muskrat-house nearly two feet high, but there was no hollow to it. See    November 7, 1853 ("A muskrat-house on the top of a rock, too thin round the sides for a passage beneath, yet a small cavity at top, which makes me think that they use them merely as a sheltered perch above water."); November 7, 1858 ("I pass a musquash-house, apparently begun last night. ") See also September 20, 1855 ("Open a new and pretty sizable muskrat-house with no hollow yet made in it.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

Birds are pretty rare now.  See November 4, 1855 ("The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter,"):November 5, 1858 ("It is quite still; no wind, no insect hum, and no note of birds, but one hairy woodpecker."); November 24, 1857 ("Nowadays birds are so rare I am wont to mistake them at first for a leaf or mote blown off from the trees or bushes")

See a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights. 

See November 7, 1858 ("The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up. ") See also  October 20, 1856 ("Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter (began to have a fire, more or less, say ten days or a fortnight ago), we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs");  November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch . . .a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.”); December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

A gray squirrel. . . runs down a limb of an oak and hides behind the trunk See November 13, 1857 (“ I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves . . . I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.”); November 20, 1858 ("I have seen more gray squirrels of late . . . not merely because the trees are bare but because they are stirring about more, — nutting, etc.");  November 30, 1851 ("While the squirrels hid themselves in the tree-tops, I sat on an oak stump by an old cellar-hole and mused. This squirrel is always an unexpectedly large animal to see frisking about. ") 

A red one runs along the trees to scold at me, See December 1, 1857 ("I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

The world and my life

are simplified this still, dark

mizzling afternoon.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The world and my life are simplified 

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-551107

A Book of the Seasons: November 7.

November 7.

The Saxonville, factory-bell sounds o'er the woods. That sound perchance it is that whets my vision. . . 

. 

Dear to me to lie in, this sand;

fit to preserve the bones of a race

for thousands of years to come.

And this is my home,

my native soil; and I am

a New-Englander.

Of thee, O earth,

are my bone

and sinew made.

To thee,

O sun,

am I brother.

To this dust

my body will gladly return

as to its origin.

Here have I

my habitat

I am of thee.

November 7, 1851

November 7, 2023

And this is my home

my native soil and I am

a New-Englander.

November 7, 1851

A clear cold morning

walking with hands in pockets --

the sun far southward.

November 7, 1853

This cold morning notes

of small birds sound like a nail

dropped on an anvil.

November 7, 1853

The notes of small birds
like a nail on an anvil
in now leafless woods.
November 7, 1853

The view contracted -
my world and life simplified
by the misty rain.
November 7, 1855

The world and my life

are simplified this still dark

mizzling afternoon.

November 7, 1855

November 7, 2021

Another drizzling day, — as fine a mist as can fall. I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon; my walk or voyage is more suggestive and profitable than in bright weather. The view is contracted by the misty rain, the water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection. I am more open to impressions, more sensitive (not calloused or indurated by sun and wind), as if in a chamber still. My thoughts are concentrated; I am all compact. The solitude is real, too, for the weather keeps other men at home. This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling. The sound of a wagon going over an unseen bridge is louder than ever, and so of other sounds. I am compelled to look at near objects. All things have a soothing effect; the very clouds and mists brood over me. My power of observation and contemplation is much increased. My attention does not wander. The world and my life are simplified. November 7, 1855

A clear, cold, as well as frosty, morning. The sun now rises far southward. I have to walk with my hands in my pockets. I see westward the earliest sunlight on the reddish oak leaves and the pines. November 7, 1853

The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil. November 7, 1853

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,— a jay at a distance; and see a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights. November 7, 1855

The nuthatch is another bird of the fall which I hear these days and for a long time, — apparently ever since the young birds grew up. November 7, 1858

The very earth is like a house shut up for the winter, and I go knocking about it in vain. But just then I heard a chickadee on a hemlock, and was inexpressibly cheered to find that an old acquaintance was yet stirring about the premises, and was, I was assured, to be there all winter. All that is evergreen in me revived at once. November 7, 1858

Going up the lane beyond Farmer’s, I was surprised to see fly up from the white, stony road, two snow buntings, which alighted again close by, one on a large rock, the other on the stony ground. They had pale-brown or tawny touches on the white breast, on each side of the head, and on the top of the head, in the last place with some darker color. Had light-yellowish bills. They sat quite motionless within two rods, and allowed me to approach within a rod, as if conscious that the white rocks,  etc., concealed them. It seemed as if they were attracted to surfaces of the same color with themselves, — white and black (or quite dark) and tawny. One squatted flat, if not both. Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment. November 7, 1858

It cleared up this forenoon. I leave my boat opposite the Hemlocks. I see the cold sunlight from some glade between the clouds falling on distant oak woods, now nearly bare, and as I glance up the hill between them. seeing the bare but bright hillside beyond, I think, Now we are left to the hemlocks and pines with their silvery light, to the bare trees and withered grass. November 7, 1858

The mayflower leaves we saw there, and the Viola pedata in blossom. November 7, 1851

This has been another Indian-summer day. Thermometer 58° at noon. November 7, 1857

Apple and alder leaves thickly strew the ground. From amid the leaves anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets, but still with the bloom on it and at least as ripe and well kept, if not better than those in barrels. November 7, 1858

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

I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk this dark day. It is long since I have seen one of any species except the insculpta. They must have begun to keep below and go into winter quarters about three weeks ago. November 7, 1855

A muskrat-house on the top of a rock, too thin round the sides for a passage beneath, yet a small cavity at top, which makes me think that they use them merely as a sheltered perch above water. They seize thus many cores to build on, as a hummock left by the ice. (Red clover.) The wads of which this muskrat house was composed were about six inches by four, rounded and massed at one end, flaking off at the other, and were composed chiefly of a little green (for the most part withered dark-brown) moss-like weed, and had the strong odor of the fresh-water sponge and conferva. November 7, 1853

Opened a muskrat-house nearly two feet high, but there was no hollow to it. Apparently they do not form that part yet.  November 7, 1855

You will sometimes see a sudden wave flow along a puny ditch of a brook, inundating all its shores, when a musquash is making his escape beneath. He soon plunges into some hole in the bank under water, and all is still again.  November 7, 1857

I pass a musquash-house, apparently begun last night. The first mouthfuls of weeds were placed between some small button-bush stems which stood amid the pads and pontederia, for a support and to prevent their being washed away. Opposite, I see some half concealed amid the bleached phalaris grass (a tall coarse grass), or, in some places, the blue-joint. November 7, 1858

Minott adorns whatever part of nature he touches; whichever way he walks he transfigures the earth for me. If a common man speaks of Walden Pond to me, I see only a shallow, dull-colored body of water without reflections or peculiar color, but if Minott speaks of it, I see the green water and reflected hills at once, for he has been there. I hear the rustle of the leaves from woods which he goes through. November 7, 1857

The sun sets while we are perched on a high rock in the north of Weston.  It soon grows finger cold. November 7, 1851

At Walden are three reflections of the bright full (or nearly) moon, one moon and two sheens further off.  November 7, 1851

November 7, 2021

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles

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

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

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

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

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

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 © 2009-2021

November sunrise.

November 7. 

A clear, cold, as well as frosty, morning. The sun now rises far southward. I have to walk with my hands in my pockets. I see westward the earliest sunlight on the reddish oak leaves and the pines. 

The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 7, 1853

The notes of one or two small birds, this cold morning, in the now comparatively leafless woods, sound like a nail dropped on an anvil. See March 13, 1853 (“Listening for early birds, I hear a faint tinkling sound in the leafless woods, as if a piece of glass rattled against a stone”); March 18, 1858 (“Almost every bush has its song sparrow this morning, and their tinkling strains are heard on all sides.”);  December 5, 1853 (“”See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles? ); December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle. . ., is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together.")