Now is the time for meadow walking.

July 11. 

July 11, 2015

4.30 A. M. -To the river.

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. So they are dispersed.

The heart-leaf flower is abundant more than ever, but shut up at this hour.

The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock.

The Polygonum hydropiperoides, I think it is, now in blossom in the mud by the river.

Morning-glories are in perfection now, some dense masses of this vine with very red flowers, very attractive and cool-looking in dry mornings. They are very tender and soon defaced in a nosegay.

The large orange lily with sword-shaped leaves, strayed from cultivation, by the roadside beyond the stone bridge.

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day, thus showing a preference for that portion of the day.

P. M. — To Conantum.

The wind makes it rather more comfortable to-day.

That small globose white flower with glossy radical leaves is common now on the muddy shore of the river.

The fishes' nests are left high and dry, and I perceive that they are distinctly hollowed, five or six inches deep, in the sand, i. e. below the surrounding surface.

Here are some which still contain their panful of water, but are no longer connected with the river. They have a distinct raised edge of sand about one and a half inches high and three or four wide.

The lilies I have tried in water this warmest weather have wilted the first day. Only the water can produce and sustain such flowers. Those which are left high and dry, or even in very shallow water, are wont to have a dwarfed growth.

The Victoria lily is a water flower.

The river is low. 

Now is the time for meadow walking. (I am in the meadow north of Hubbard's Bridge.) You go dry-shod now through meadows which were comparatively impassable before, —- those western reserves which you had not explored. We are thankful that the water has preserved them inviolate so long.

There is a cheerful light reflected from the undersides of the ferns in the drier meadows now, and has been for some time, especially in breezy weather.

It was so in June.

The dusty roads and roadsides begin to show the effects of drouth.

The corn rolls.

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. It probably commenced about the 9th. Its flowers are conspicuous for a tree, and a rather agreeable odor fills the air. The tree resounds with the hum of bees on the flowers. On the whole it is a rich sight.

Is it not later than the chestnut?

The elder is a very conspicuous and prevalent flower now, with its large flat cymes.

Pogonias and calopogons are very abundant in the meadows. They are interesting, if only for their high color.

Any redness is, after all, rare and precious. It is the color of our blood. The rose owes its preëminence in great measure to its color. It is said to be from the Celtic rhos, red. It is nature's most precious color.

Impatiens fulva, by Corner Spring.

I hear often nowadays the kingbird's chattering twitter.

As you walk under oaks, you perceive from time to time a considerable twig come gently falling to the ground, whose stem has been weakened by a worm, and here and there lie similar twigs whose leaves are now withered and changed.

How valuable and significant is shade now! Trees appear valuable for shade mainly, and we observe their shadows as much as their form and foliage.

The waving of the meadow-grass near Fair Haven Isle is very agreeable and refreshing to one looking down from an elevation. It appears not merely like a waving or undulation, but a progress, a creeping, as of an invisible army, over it, its flat curly head.

The grass appears tufted, watered.

On the river the ripple is continued into the pads, where it is smoother,-- a longer undulation.

Pines or evergreens do not attract so much attention now. They have retired on the laurels of the winter campaign.

What is called genius is the abundance of life or health, so that whatever addresses the senses, as the flavor of these berries, or the lowing of that cow, which sounds as if it echoed along a cool mountain-side just before night, where odoriferous dews perfume the air and there is everlasting vigor, serenity, and expectation of perpetual untarnished morning, — each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication.  The shrunken stream of life overflows its banks, makes and fertilizes broad intervals, from which generations derive their sustenances.

This is the true overflowing of the Nile. 

So exquisitely sensitive are we, it makes us embrace our fates, and, instead of suffering or indifference, we enjoy and bless. If we have not dissipated the vital, the divine, fluids, there is, then, a circulation of vitality beyond our bodies. The cow is nothing. Heaven is not there, but in the condition of the hearer.

I am thrilled to think that I owe a perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that these berries have fed my brain. After I had been eating these simple, wholesome, ambrosial fruits on this high hillside, I found my senses whetted, I was young again, and whether I stood or sat I was not the same creature.

The yellow lily is not open-petalled like the red, nor is its flower upright, but drooping. On the whole I am most attracted by the red. They both make freckles beautiful.

Fragrances must not be overpowering, however sweet. I love the sweet fragrance of melilot.

The Circæa alpina, enchanter's-nightshade, by Corner Spring, low, weed-like, somewhat like touch-me-not leaves. Was it not the C. Lutetiana (a larger plant) that I found at Saw Mill Brook?


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1852

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day. See June 20, 1853 (" Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut."); July 1, 1852 ("After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. See July 16, 1852 ("The bass on Conantum is a very rich sight now, . . . The tree resounds with the hum of bees, — bumblebees and honey-bees ; rose-bugs and butterflies, also, are here, — a perfect susurrus, a sound, as C. says, unlike any other in nature, — not like the wind, as that is like the sea. . . . The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry.");. July 17, 1854 ("I was surprised by the loud humming of bees, etc., etc., in the bass tree; thought it was a wind rising at first. Methinks none of our trees attract so many"); . July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars"); July 18, 1854 (" We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. ") Compare June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”); June 21, 1853 (There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year.""); June 30, 1852 ("The bass tree is budded"); July 3, 1853("There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year."); July 4, 1853 ("The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely."); July 9, 1857 (“I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”); and see also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Now is the time for meadow walking. See August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go."); August 21, 1859 ("There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet.."); June 26, 1860 ("You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.") Compare July 10, 1852 (“I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. It seems the properest highway for this weather."); January 20, 1856 ("Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter.")

Whatever addresses the senses . . . each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication. See  July 16, 1851 ("To have such sweet impressions made on us,. . . This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.");   August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody."); December 11, 1855 ("My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world; Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”)

It is a lichen day.

December 18. 

Rains. 

P. M. — To Assabet opposite Tarbell's, via Abel Hosmer's. 

It rains but little this afternoon, though there is no sign of fair weather. Only the mist appears thinner here and there from time to time. 

It is a lichen day. 

The pitch pines on the south of the road at the Colburn farm are very inspiriting to behold. Their green is as much enlivened and freshened as that of the lichens. It suggests a sort of sunlight on them, though not even a patch of clear sky is seen to-day. 

As dry and olive or slate-colored lichens are of a fresh and living green, so the already green pine-needles have acquired a far livelier tint, as if they enjoyed this moisture as much as the lichens do. They seem to be lit up more than when the sun falls on them. Their trunks, and those of trees generally, being wet, are very black, and the bright lichens on them are so much the more remarkable. 

I see three shrikes in different places to-day, — two on the top of apple trees, sitting still in the storm, on the lookout. They fly low to another tree when disturbed, much like a bluebird, and jerk their tails once or twice when they alight. 

Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press.

The thick, low cloud or mist makes novel prospects for us. In the southwest horizon I see a darker mass of it stretched along, seen against itself. The oak woods a quarter of a mile off appear more uniformly red than ever. They are not only redder for being wet, but, through the obscurity of the mist, one leaf runs into an other and the whole mass makes one impression. 

The withered oak leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color. Also some of the most withered white oak leaves with roundish black spots like small lichens are quite interesting now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 18, 1859

It is a lichen day. See   December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”); January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”); January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”); November 24, 1858 ("It is lichen day. ").

I see three shrikes in different places to-day. See December 24, 1858 ("Another shrike this afternoon, — the fourth this winter!"); : November 29, 1858 ("I see a living shrike caught to-day in the barn of the Middlesex House.”); December 12, 1858 (“See a shrike on a dead pine”);December 23, 1858 ("See a shrike on the top of an oak.”); February 5, 1859 ("I see another butcher-bird on the top of a young tree by the pond.") See also November 4, 1854 (“Saw a shrike in an apple tree, with apparently a worm in its mouth. ”);   December 29, 1855 (“Just before reaching the Cut I see a shrike flying low beneath the level of the railroad, which rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm within four or five rods. All ash or bluish-slate above down to middle of wings; dirty-white breast, and a broad black mark through eyes on side of head; primaries(?) black, and some white appears when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked bill (upper mandible).It makes no sound, but flits to the top of an oak further off. Probably a male.”);  February 3, 1856 (“see near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blustering as it was, with a remarkably even and steady sail or gliding motion like a hawk, eight or ten feet above the ground, and alight in a tree”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Northern Shrike


Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. See December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider. I am astonished that the animals make no more use of them.")

The withered oak leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color. See  December 4, 1856 ("I have no doubt that it is an important relief to the eyes which have long rested on snow, to rest on brown oak leaves and the bark of trees. We want the greatest variety within the smallest compass, and yet without glaring diversity, and we have it in the colors of the withered oak leaves.");  December 13, 1858 ("A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves, somewhat as of lichens. They are of a brighter and deeper leather-color, richer and more wholesome, . . .their tints brought out and their lobes more flattened out, and they show to great advantage, these trees hanging still with leather-colored leaves in this mizzling rain, seen against the misty sky.")

To sit under the first apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer.

May 21. 

Morning by river. 

May 21, 2019

A song sparrow's nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled.

Also a robin's nest and eggs in the crotch of a maple.

Methinks birds that build amid the small branches of trees wait for the leaves to expand. [?]

The dew hangs on the grass like globules of quicksilver. Can I tell by it if it has rained in the night? I hear that it has.

P. M. — The black oak is just beginning to blossom.

The earlier apple trees are in bloom, and resound with the hum of bees of all sizes and other insects. To sit under the first apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer.  The apple blossoms are so abundant and full, white tinged with red; a rich-scented Pomona fragrance, telling of heaps of apples in the autumn, perfectly innocent, wholesome, and delicious. 

On hillsides cut off two years ago, the red oaks now contrast at a little distance with the yellowish-green birches. The latter are covered with green lice, which cover me. 

The catbird sings like a robin sometimes, sometimes like a blackbird's sprayey warble. There is more of squeak or mew, and also of clear whistle, than in the thrasher's note. 

Nemopanthes in bloom; leaves three quarters of an inch. 

Sand cherry also, fully. 

Young blueberries every where in bloom, and Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land. 

Sorrel in bloom, beginning. I am eager to taste a handful.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 21, 1852


A song sparrow's nest and eggs so placed in a bank that none could tread on it; bluish-white, speckled.See  May 6, 1860 ("See a song sparrow’s nest with four eggs in the side of a bank, or rather ditch. I commonly find the earliest ones in such sheltered and concealed places"); May 12, 1857 ("I hear of, and also find, a ground-bird's (song sparrow's) nest with five eggs.");   May 27, 1856 ("Fringilla melodia’s nest in midst of swamp, with four eggs, made partly of usnea; two stories, i.e. upon an old nest, elevated one foot above the water; eggs with very dark blotches.")

Also a robin's nest and eggs in the crotch of a maple. See May 21, 1856 ("A robin’s nest without mud, on a young white oak in woods, with three eggs.") See also  May 6. 1855 (''A robin’s nest with two eggs, betrayed by peeping."); May 13, 1853 ("A robin's nest, with young, on the causeway"); May 19, 1854 ("The robin's nest and eggs are the earliest I see.")

The dew hangs on the grass like globules of quicksilver. May 11, 1852 ("Dews come with the grass. There is, I find on examining, a small, clear drop at the end of each blade, quite at the top on one side."); May 13, 1860: ("Each dewdrop is a delicate crystalline sphere trembling at the tip of a fresh green grass-blade.")

The earlier apple trees are in bloom. See note to May 25 , 1852 ("It is blossom week with the apples.")

Viola pedata along the woodland paths, in high land.  See  October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring. . . The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression.") See also Basho:

on mountain path

greeted by

a wild violet

The warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees.

May 15 

Sunday. 

Observe Cornus florida involucres.

Sarsaparilla flower. 

Mary Vaux Walcott.

Pussy Willow (Salix discolor), 1920

Salix discolor seed, or down, begins to blow. 

A woodcock starts up with whistling sound. 

I have been struck of late with the prominence of the Viburnum nudum leaf in the swamps, reddish-brown and one inch over, a peculiarly large and mature-looking, firm-looking leaf. 

Swamp white oak leafed several days, but generally appears as in winter at a little distance. 

Salix lucida well out, how long? 

Nemopanthes flower, apparently a day or two. 

Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. They are scarce and silent in a cool and windy day, or found only in sheltered places. 

I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches, when the buds of oaks and of most trees are but just burst generally. You are surprised to see such a sudden and rapid development when you had but just begun to think of renewed life, not yet of growth. Very properly these are called shoots. 

This plant has, perhaps, in four or five days accomplished one fourth part [of] its whole summer's growth. (So on the 4th of June I notice the shoots of the white pine, five to nine inches long, arranged raywise about the terminal one and the end of their branches, having in about a fortnight accomplished one quarter to one third their whole summer growth. Thus they may be properly said to shoot when their season comes, and then stand to harden and mature before the winter.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 15, 1859

Now, when the warblers begin to come in numbers with the leafing of the trees, the woods are so open that you can easily see them. See May 15, 1860 ("Deciduous woods now swarm with migrating warblers, especially about swamps.”) See also April 19, 1854 ("Within a few days the warblers have begun to come. They are of every hue. Nature made them to show her colors with. There are as many as there are colors and shades."); May 7, 1852 ("For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south.”); May 11, 1853 (" How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds . . .  They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blossoms and leaves. They come and give it voice."); May 18, 1856 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers about the hoary expanding buds of oaks, maples, etc., and amid the pine and spruce."); May 18, 1857 ("The swamp is all alive with warblers . . . They fill the air with their little tshree tshree sprayey notes")May 23, 1857 ("This is the time and place to hear the new-arriving warblers, the first fine days after the May storm. When the leaves generally are just fairly expanding,"); May 28, 1855 ("I have seen within three or four days two or three new warblers “) 

I see an oak shoot (or sprout) already grown ten inches. See May 26, 1854 ("Some young red oaks have already grown eighteen inches, i. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds expanded. They have accomplished more than half their year's growth, as if,. . . now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots.”); May 25, 1853 ("Many do most of their growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot - they spring - and the rest of the Year they harden and mature,. . .”); June 30, 1854 ("Young oak shoots have grown from one and a half to three or four feet, but now in some cases appear to be checked and formed a large bud.”)

So on the 4th of June I notice the shoots of the white pine, five to nine inches long. See May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.”); May 28, 1855 (“White pine and pitch pine shoots from two to five inches long.”);July 4, 1860 ("The white pine shoot which on the 19th of June had grown sixteen and a quarter inches and on the 27th twenty and three quarters is now twenty-three and an eighth inches long.”)

The warblers begin

to come in numbers with the

leafing of the trees.

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides, express more life than most trees

March 6. 

Sunday. P. M. — To Yellow Birch Swamp. 

We go through the swamp near Bee-Tree, or Oak, Ridge, listening for blackbirds or robins and, in the old orchards, for bluebirds. 

Found between two of the little birches in the path (where they grow densely), in Indigo-bird Sprout-land, a small nest suspended between one and two feet above the ground, between two of the little birches. This is where I have seen the indigo-bird in summer, and the nest apparently answers to Wilson's account of that bird's, being fastened with saliva to the birch on each side. 

Wilson says it is "built in a low bush . . . suspended between two twigs, one passing up each side." This is about the diameter of a hair-bird's nest within, composed chiefly of fine bark-shreds looking like grass and one or two strips of grape-vine bark, and very securely fastened to the birch on each side by a whitish silk or cobweb and saliva. It is thin, the lining being prob ably gone. 

There is a very picturesque large black oak on the  the Bee-Tree Ridge, of this form: 

The genista is not evergreen, having turned brown, though it is still quite leafy. I could not find a single green shoot. It is correctly represented in Loudon's "Arboretum," in '44, as "a deciduous under-shrub." Yet in his "Encyclopaedia," in '55, it is represented as "an evergreen shrub." 

Measured a thorn which, at six inches from the ground, or the smallest place below the branches, — for it branches soon, — was two feet three inches in circumference.

Cut off a barberry on which I counted some twenty-six rings, the broadest diameter being about three and a half inches. Both these were on the west side the Yellow Birch Swamp. 

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides, are very pretty. Like the alders, with their reddish catkins, they express more life than most trees. Most trees look completely at rest, if not dead, now, but these look as if the sap must be already flowing in them, — and in winter as well. 

In woodland roads you see where the trees which were bent down by ice, and obstructed the way, were cut off the past winter; their tops lie on one side.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, March 6, 1859

Yellow Birch Swamp.  This is also known as Fever-bush Swamp, Rattlesnake Fern Swamp and Botrychium Swamp,   See note to July 13, 1857 ("Rattlesnake Fern Swamp'); February 18, 1854 ("Yellow Birch Swamp"); July 10, 1857 ("He found, about a week ago, the Botrychium Virginianum in bloom, about the bass in Fever-bush Swamp.”); September 2, 1857 ("In the botrychium swamp, where the fever-bush is the prevailing underwood "); September 16, 1857 ("Botrychium Swamp"); .May 4, 1859 ("Am struck by the beauty of the yellow birches, now fairly begun to be in bloom, at Yellow Birch, or Botrychium, Swamp.");.

Measured a thorn which, at six inches from the groundwas two feet three inches in circumference. See September 2, 1857 ("Measured the thorn at Yellow Birch Swamp. At one foot from ground it is a foot and ten inches in circumference.")

The slender black birches, with their catkined twigs gracefully drooping on all sides. See May 8, 1853 ("The catkins of the black birch gracefully drooping at the ends of the twigs bent down by their weight, conspicuous at a distance.") 

The alders, with their reddish catkins. See March 6, 1853 ("the alder catkins were relaxed and began to lengthen and open, and by the second day to drop their pollen;")

See also: A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I Have Seen Signs of the Spring:

• Listening for the bluebird
• Catkins expanding

Cutting down a large red oak

February 2.

I see Peter Hutchinson cutting down a large red oak on A. Heywood’s hillside, west of the former’s house. 

He points out to me what he calls the “gray oak” there, with “a thicker bar” than the red. It is the scarlet oak.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 2, 1859

Cutting down a large red oak on . February 10, 1854 (“The sturdy white oak near the Derby railroad bridge has been cut down. It measures five feet and three inches over the stump, at eighteen inches from the ground.”); December 3, 1855 ("I see one or two more large oaks in E. Hubbard’s wood lying high on stumps, waiting for snow to be removed. I miss them as surely and with the same feeling that I do the old inhabitants out of the village street.")

It is the scarlet oak. See January 19, 1859 {"Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground,")

Snow sugars the ground to reveal a cow-path in the distant landscape.

November 24

November 24, 2018

November 24, 2019

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

There is a slight sugaring of snow on the ground. On grass ground there is much the less, and that is barely perceptible, while plowed ground is quite white, and I can thus distinguish such fields even to the horizon. It is dark, drizzling still from time to time, sprinkling or snowing a little. I see more snow in the north and north west horizon. I can not only distinguish plowed fields — regular white squares in the midst of russet — but even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long, as I look across to Conantum. It is pleasant to see thus revealed as a feature, even in the distant landscape, a cow-path leading from far inland down to the river. 

The young oaks on the plain under the Cliffs are of a more uniform color than a fortnight ago, — a reddish brown. 

Fair Haven Pond is closed still.

It is a lichen day, with a little moist snow falling. The great green lungwort lichen shows now on the oaks, — strange that there should be none on the pines close by, —and the fresh bright chestnut fruit of other kinds, glistening with moisture, brings life and immortality to light. That side of the trunk on which the lichens are thickest is the side on which the snow lodges in long ridges. 

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight, little snow as there was. Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it. 

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home. 

Saw a scarlet oak some sixteen inches in diameter at three feet from ground blown down evidently in that southeast wind some months ago. It stood on the southerly edge of Wheeler’s wood, and had fallen north-north west, breaking off a white oak nine inches in diameter and a small white pine in its fall. It was a perfectly sound oak. I was surprised to see how little root it had. Very few roots reached deeper than two feet, — the thickness of the crust of earth turned up by its fall,— and those that did were not bigger than one’s finger; and there was not a root bigger than your finger at four feet from the centre on any side of the more than semi circle exposed. No wonder it was uprooted! 

Here is an author who contrasts love for “the beauties of the person” with that for “excellences of the mind,” as if these were the alternatives. I must say that it is for neither of these that I should feel the strongest afiection. I love that one with whom I sympathize, be she “beautiful” or otherwise, of excellent mind or not.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 24, 1858

When I looked out this morning, the landscape presented a very pretty wintry sight . . . it had lodged on every twig See November 13, 1858 (“We looked out the window at 9 P. M. and saw the ground for the most part white with the first sugaring, which at first we could hardly tell from a mild moonlight, — only there was no moon. Thus it comes stealthily in the night and changes the whole aspect of the earth.”)

Plowed ground is quite white. See November 24, 1860 (“The plowed fields were for a short time whitened”) See also  October 19, 1854 (“The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow,”); November 8, 1853 ("The snow begins to whiten the plowed ground now, but it has not overcome the russet of the grass ground.") December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”);

Even cart-paths, and foot or cow paths a quarter of a mile long. See February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.) It is quite distinct in many places where you would not have noticed it before. A light snow will often reveal a faint foot or cart track in a field which was hardly discernible before, for it reprints it, as it were, in clear white type, alto-relievo.”)

It is lichen day. See December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”);January 7, 1855 (“It is a lichen day. . . . How full of life and of eyes is the damp bark!”); January 26, 1858 (“This is a lichen day. The white lichens, partly encircling aspens and maples, look as if a painter had touched their trunks with his brush as he passed”)  January 26, 1852 ("The lichens look rather bright to-day, . . .The beauty of lichens, with their scalloped leaves, the small attractive fields, the crinkled edge! I could study a single piece of bark for hour.”);


Being very moist, it had lodged on every twig, and every one had its counterpart in a light downy white one, twice or thrice its own depth, resting on it. See January 14, 1853 ("White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness.”); December 26, 1853 ("It has fallen so gently that it forms an upright wall on the slenderest twig”); December 24, 1856 ("The snow collects and is piled up in little columns like down about every twig and stem, and this is only seen in perfection, complete to the last flake, while it is snowing, as now.”); March 2, 1858 (“ the snow is quite soft or damp, lodging in perpendicular walls on the limbs, white on black.”)

I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad. See September 23, 1855 (" I hear from my chamber a screech owl about Monroe’s house this bright moonlight night, — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt perchance, a rapid trill, then subdued or smothered a note or two.”) August 14, 1854 (“I hear the tremulous squealing scream of a screech owl in the Holden Woods.”); June 2, 1860 ("I soon hear its mournful scream. . . not loud now but, though within twenty or thirty rods, sounding a mile off.”); June 25, 1860 ("At evening up the Assabet hear four or five screech owls on different sides of the river, uttering those peculiar low screwing or working, ventriloquial sounds.”)

Snow sugars the ground

to reveal a cow-path in

the distant landscape.

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.

We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

October 31. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Our currants bare; how long? 

The Italian poplars are now a dull greenish yellow, not nearly so fair as the few leaves that had turned some time ago. 

Some silvery abeles are the same color.  

I go over the Hubbard Bridge causeway. The young Salix alba osiers are just bare, or nearly so, and the yellow twigs accordingly begin to show. 

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. That warm weather of the 19th and 20th was, methinks, 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. 

I see many red oaks, thickly leaved, fresh and at the height of their tint. These are pretty clear yellow. It is much clearer yellow than any black oak, but some others are about bare. These and scarlet oaks, which are yet more numerous, are the only oaks not withered that I notice to-day, except one middle-sized white oak probably protected from frost under Lee’s Cliff. 

Between the absolutely deciduous plants and the evergreens are all degrees, not only those which retain their withered leaves all winter, but those, commonly called evergreen, which, though slow to change, yet acquire at last a ruddy color while they keep their leaves, as the lambkill and water andromeda (?).

Get a good sight on Conantum of a sparrow (such as I have seen in flocks some time), which utters a sharp te te-te quickly repeated as it flies, sitting on a wall three or four rods off. I see that it is rather long and slender, is perhaps dusky-ash above with some black backward; has a pretty long black bill, a white ring about eye, white chin and line under check, a black (or dark) spotted breast and dirty cream-color beneath; legs long and slender and perhaps reddish-brown, two faint light bars on wings; but, what distinguishes it more, it keeps gently jerking or tossing its tail as it sits, and when a flock flies over you see the tails distinctly black beneath. Though I detected no yellow, yet I think from the note that it must be the shore lark (such as I saw March 24th) in their fall plumage. They are a common bird at this season, I think. 

I see a middle-sized red oak side by side with a black one under Lee’s Cliff. The first is still pretty fresh, the latter completely withered. The withered leaves of the first are flat, apparently thin, and a yellowish brown;those of the black are much curled and a very different and dark brown, and look thicker. 

Barberry generally is thickly leaved and only some what yellowish or scarlet, say russet. 

I tasted some of the very small grapes on Blackberry Steep, such as I had a jelly made of. Though shrivelled, and therefore ripe, they are very acid and inedible. 

The slippery elm has a few scattered leaves on it, while the common close by is bare. So I think the former is later to fall. You may well call it bare. 

The cedar at Lee’s Cliff has apparently just fallen, — almost. 

As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red.

Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods near the Codman place, like huge roses with a myriad fine petals, and some more slender ones, in a small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, in the very horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove and shouldering them with their red coats, — an intense, burning red which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take to ward them, — look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. 

Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light, but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” working here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves, for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this distance. They are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected,[color] is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree, especially in the horizon, becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, the redness grows and glows like a cloud. It only has some comparatively dull-red leaves for a nucleus and to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. I have no doubt that you would be disappointed in the brilliancy of those trees if you were to walk to them. You see a redder tree than exists. It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. The scarlet oak asks the clear sky and the brightness of the Indian summer. These bring out its color. If the sun goes into a cloud they become indistinct. 

These are my China asters, my late garden flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

To my surprise, the only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand, and so are the Lombardy poplars in our streets. The Salix alba, too, looks yellower at a distance now. Their dull-brown and green colors do not report them selves so far, while the yellow crescit eundo, and we see the sun reflected in it. 

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before, standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. It is perhaps the largest of its species that I know. It was by merest accident that I stumbled on it, and if I had been sent to find it, I should have thought it to be, as we say, like looking for a needle in a haymow. All summer, and it chances for so many years, it has been concealed to me; but now, walking in a different direction, to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, and looking off just before sunset, when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color. 

Such is its fame, at last, and reward for living in that solitude and obscurity. It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape, and would be the cynosure of all eyes here. Thus it plays its part in the choir. I made a minute of its locality, glad to know where so large an aspen grew. Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity. It seemed the obscurest of trees. Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence. Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under. The sailor sails, and the soldier marches, under a color which will report his virtue farthest, and the ship’s “private signals” must be such as can be distinguished at the greatest distance. The eye, which distinguishes and appreciates color, is itself the seat of color in the human body. 

It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me, and now the acquaintance thus propitiously formed will, I trust, be permanent. 

Of the three (?) mocker-nuts on Conantum top only the southernmost is bare, the rest are thickly leaved yet. 

The Viburnum Lentago is about bare. 

That hour-glass apple shrub near the old Conantum house is full of small yellow fruit. Thus it is with them. By the end of some October, when their leaves have fallen, you see them glowing with an abundance of wild fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds them. Such is their pursuit of knowledge through difficulties. Though they may have taken the hour-glass form, think not that their sands are run out. So is it with the rude, neglected genius from amid the country hills; he suffers many a check at first, browsed on by fate, springing in but a rocky pasture, the nursery of other creatures there, and he grows broad and strong, and scraggy and thorny, hopelessly stunted, you would say, and not like a sleek orchard tree all whose forces are husbanded and the precious early years not lost, and when at first, within this rind and hedge, the man shoots up, you see the thorny scrub of his youth about him, and he walks like an hour-glass, aspiring above, it is true, but held down and impeded by the rubbish of old difficulties overcome, and you seem to see his sands running out. But at length, thanks to his rude culture, he attains to his full stature, and every vestige of the thorny hedge which clung to his youth disappears, and he bears golden crops of Porters or Baldwins, whose fame will spread through all orchards for generations to come, while that thrifty orchard tree which was his competitor will, perchance, have long since ceased to bear its engrafted fruit and decayed.

The beach plum is withering green, say with the apple trees, which are half of them bare. 

Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1858

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. See October 31, 1853 ("t is a beautiful , warm and calm Indian- summer afternoon . . . I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day . . . the gossamer reaching across the causeway . . . streamed southward with the slight zephyr. As if the year were weaving her shroud out of light . . . They were streaming in like manner southward from the railing of the bridge  parallel waving threads of light, producing a sort of flashing in the air ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. See October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. ");October 25, 1858 ("[I]t is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood.")

It becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. … It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. Compare October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. The air is filled with a remarkably vaporous haze.")

The only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know.")


Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height. See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.")