We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, — clear white light.

November 2


What is Nature unless there is an eventful human life passing within her?

Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which she shows most beautiful.

P. M. – To Walden and Flint’s.

What are those sparrows in loose flocks which I have seen two or three weeks, — some this afternoon on the railroad causeway, — with small heads and rather long necks in proportion to body, which is longish and slender, yellowish-white or olivaceous breast, striped with dark, ashy sides of neck, whitish over and beneath the eye, and some white observed in tail when they fly ? I think a dark bill and legs.

They utter a peculiar note, not heard here at other seasons, somewhat like the linarias, a sort of shuffling or chuckling iche-tche tche-tche, quickly uttered.

Can they be the grass-bird ? They resemble it in marking. They are much larger than the tree sparrows. Methinks it is a very common fall bird.

C. says he saw succory yesterday, and a loon on the pond the 30th ult.

The prinos berries are almost gone.

I am somewhat surprised to find that the Aster undulatus at Walden is killed by the frost; only one low and obscure one has any flowers left.

Therefore, though it is the latest aster that is abundant, I am not sure that it lasts absolutely longer than the A. puniceus, or even Tradescanti.

I see no other flowers on the Peak.

Poke berries there are still partly green, partly ripe, as usual.

The leaves of the umbelled pyrola are as glossy as in the spring, which proves that they do not owe their glossiness in the spring to the influence of that season.

Two ducks on Walden.

The Canada snap dragon is still fresh and in flower by roadside near pond, and a sprig from root of Solidago nemoralis.

I gather some fine large pignuts by the wall (near the beech trees) on Baker's land. It is just the time to get these, and this seems to be quite early enough for most pignuts.

I find that there have been plenty of beechnuts, and there are still some empty burs on the trees and many nuts on the ground, but I cannot find one with meat in it.

The beech leaves have all fallen except some about the lower part of the trees, and they make a fine thick bed on the ground.  They are very beautiful, firm, and perfect leaves, unspotted and not eaten by insects, of a handsome, clear leather color, like a book bound in calf. Crisp and elastic; no wonder they make beds of them.

Of a clear [space left in manuscript ] or leather-color, more or less dark and remarkably free from stains and imperfections.

They cover the ground so perfectly and cleanly as to tempt you to recline on it and admire the beauty of their smooth boles from that position, covered with lichens of various colors-green, etc. — which you think you never see elsewhere.

They impress you as full of health and vigor, so that their bark can hardly contain their spirits but lies in folds or wrinkles about their ankles like a sock, with the embonpoint of infancy, wrinkles of fat.

The pollen [sic] of the Lycopodium dendroideum falls in showers or in clouds when my foot strikes it. How long? 

The witch-hazel appears to be nearly out of bloom, most of the flowers withering or frost-bitten.

The shrub oak cups which I notice to-day have lost their acorns.

I examined a squirrel's nest in a tree which suggested to me(it having a foundation of twigs, coarse basketwork; above, shreds or fibres of bark and a few leaves) that perchance the squirrel, like the mouse, sometimes used a deserted bird's nest,-a crow's or hawk' .

A red-tailed hawk.

Among the buds, etc., etc., to be noticed now, remember the alder and birch catkins, so large and conspicuous, — on the alder, pretty red catkins dangling in bunches of three or four, — the minute red buds of the panicled andromeda, the roundish plump ones of the common hazel, the longish sharp ones of the witch-hazel, etc.

The sun sets.

We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods,-is seen through the woods, — the leaves being gone.

When the sun is set, there is no sudden contrast, no deep darkening, but a clear, strong white light still prevails, and the west finally glows with a generally diffused and moderate saffron-golden (?).

Coming home by boat the other evening, I smelled a traveller's pipe very strongly a third of a mile distant. He was crossing Wood ' s Bridge.

The evening star is now very bright; and is that Jupiter near it?

 I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf.

I see hedge-mustard very fresh.

Those plants which are earliest in the spring have already made the most conspicuous preparation for that season. The skunk-cabbage spathes have started, the alder catkins, as I have said, hazel, etc.; and is there anything in the double scales of the maples, the prominent scales of willow and other catkins, sometimes burst (?) ? 

A part of the lambkill is turned dull-reddish.

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

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 2, 1853

Can they be the grass-bird? See October 3, 1860 ("I have seen and heard sparrows in flocks, more as if flitting by, within a week, or since the frosts began.); October 11, 1856 ("Bay-wing sparrows numerous."); October 12, 1859 ("I see scattered flocks of bay-wings amid the weeds and on the fences."); October 16, 1855 ("I look at a grass-bird on a wall in the dry Great Fields. There is a dirty-white or cream-colored line above the eye and another from the angle of the mouth beneath it and a white ring close about the eye. The breast is streaked with this creamy white and dark brown in streams, as on the cover of a book"); October 23, 1853 ("And many birds flit before me along the railroad, with faint notes, too large for linarias. . . .Probably the white-in-tail [i. e. vesper sparrow, or grass finch.]")

We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods. See October 25, 1858 (“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 27, 1858 (“the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”); November 1, 1858 ("The November twilights just begun!"); November 14, 1853 (" This [October] light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November.")  November 17, 1858 ("The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me.");   November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”) See also  note to November 10, 1858 ("The warmer colors are now rare. A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; all the light of November may be called an afterglow.")

Among the buds, etc., etc., to be noticed now, remember the alder and birch catkins, so large and conspicuous, — on the alder, pretty red catkins dangling in bunches of three or four, See November 6, 1853 ("The plump, roundish, club-shaped, well-protected buds of the alders, and rich purplish or mulberry catkins, three, four, or five together.")

The Canada snap dragon is still fresh and in flower by roadside near pond. See August 21, 1851 ("Canada snap dragon by roadside (not conspicuous).")

The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones. See November 1, 1860 ("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 19, 1853 ('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.") See also note to November 3, 1857 ("It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

The November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf. See November 10, 1858 (" Look for these late flowers —November flowers — on hills, above frost."); November 5, 1855 (“I see the shepherd’s-purse, hedge-mustard, and red clover, — November flowers. ”); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.”).; November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common), cerastium, autumnal dandelion, dandelion, and perhaps tall buttercup, etc., the last four scarce. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse, etc.,")

November 2. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 2 

November twilight,

clear white light seen through the woods —

the leaves being gone.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

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

Walden apparently froze over last night.

January 6. 

Walden apparently froze over last night. 

It is but little more than an inch thick, and two or three square rods by Hubbard's shore are still open. A dark, transparent ice. It would not have frozen entirely over, as it were in one night, or maybe a little more, and yet have been so thin next the shore as well as in the middle, if it had not been so late in the winter, and so ready to freeze. It is a dark, transparent ice, but will not bear me without much cracking. 

As I walked along the edge, I started out three little pickerel no longer than my finger from close to the shore, which went wiggling into deeper water like bloodsuckers or pollywogs. 

When I lie down on it and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles which I had thought were within its own substance are against its under surface, and that they are continually rising up from the bottom, — perfect spheres, apparently, and very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice (perhaps an inch and an eighth), from one eightieth of an inch in diameter, or a mere point, up to one eighth of an inch. 

There are thirty or forty of these, at least, to every square inch. These, probably, when heated by the sun, make it crack and whoop. There are, also, within the substance of the ice, oblong perpendicular bubbles half an inch long, more or less, by about one thirtieth of an inch, and these are commonly widest at the bottom (?), or, oftener, separate minute spherical bubbles of equal or smaller diameter, one directly above another, like a string of beads, perhaps the first stage of the former. But these internal bubbles are not nearly so numerous as those in the water beneath. 

It may be twenty-four hours since the ice began to form decidedly. 

I see, on the sandy bottom a few inches beneath, the white cases of caddis-worms made of the white quartz sand or pebbles. And the bottom is very much creased or furrowed where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks, — perhaps the caddis-worm, for I find one or two of the same in the furrows, though the latter are deep and broad for them to make. 

This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost, the leaves a third of an inch long, shaped somewhat like this, with triangular points, but very thin. Another morning there will be no frost. 

I forgot to say yesterday that I picked up four pignuts by the squirrel's hole, from which he had picked the meat, having gnawed a hole about half the diameter of the nut in width on each side. After I got home I observed that in each case the holes were on the sides of the nut and not on the edges, and I cut into a couple with my knife in order to see certainly which was the best way to get at the meat. 

Cutting into the edge, I came upon the thick partition which runs the whole length of the nut, and then came upon the edges of the meats, and finally was obliged to cut away a good part of the nut on both edges before I could extract the meat, because it was held by the neck in the middle. 

But when I cut holes on the sides, not only the partitions I met with were thin and partial, but I struck the meats broadside and extracted them with less trouble. It may be that it is most convenient for the squirrel to hold the nut thus, but I think there is a deeper reason than that. 

I observe that, out of six whole pignuts which I picked from a tree, three are so cracked transversely to the division of the meat that I can easily pry them open with my knife. 

They hang on as food for animals.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 6, 1853

Walden apparently froze over last night. See December 27, 1852 ("Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. A black and white duck on it."); . January 2, 1853 ("Walden begins to freeze in the coves or shallower water on the north side, where it was slightly skimmed over several weeks ago"); January 3, 1853 ("Walden not yet frozen.")

When I lie down on it and examine it closely, I find that the greater part of the bubbles are continually rising up from the bottom, — perfect spheres, very beautiful and clear, in which I see my face through this thin ice. June 3, 1854 ("On the pond we make bubbles with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head).")

This morning the weeds and twigs and fences were covered with what I may call a leaf frost. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 6.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying.

a fragrance

from the past

almost forgotten

~ Buson

October 2

Rain in the night and cloudy this forenoon. We had all our dog-days in September this year. It was too dry before, even for fungi. Only the last three weeks have we had any fungi to speak of. 

Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. 

I see a cricket feeding on an apple, into which he has eaten so deep that only his posteriors project, but he does not desist a moment though I shake the apple and finally drop it on the ground. 

P. M. — To lygodium. 

One of the large black birches on Tarbell's land is turned completely brownish-yellow and has lost half its leaves; the other is green still. 

I see in the cornfield above this birch, collected about the trunk of an oak, on the ground, fifty to a hundred ears of corn which have been stripped to the cob, evidently by the squirrels. Apparently a great part of the kernels remain on the ground, but in every case the germ has been eaten out. It is apparent that the squirrel prefers this part, for he has not carried off the rest. 

I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years. 

So many maple and pine and other leaves have now fallen that in the woods, at least, you walk over a carpet of fallen leaves. 

As I sat on an old pigeon-stand, not used this year, on the hill south of the swamp, at the foot of a tree, set up with perches nailed on it, a pigeon hawk, as I take it, came and perched on the tree. As if it had been wont to catch pigeons at such places. 

That large lechea, now so freshly green and some times scarlet, looks as if it would make a pretty edging like box, as has been suggested. 

The Aster undulatus and Solidago coesia and often puberula are particularly prominent now, looking late and bright, attracting bees, etc. 

I see the S. coesia so covered with the little fuzzy gnats as to be whitened by them. 

How bright the S. puberula in sprout-lands, — its yellow wand, — perhaps in the midst of a clump of little scarlet or dark-purple black oaks! 

The A. undulatus looks fairer than ever, now that flowers are more scarce. 

The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns. 

Acorns generally, as I notice, — swamp white, shrub, black, and white, — are turned brown; but few are still green. Yet few, except of shrub oaks, have fallen. I hear them fall, however, as I stand under the trees. This would be the time to notice them. 

How much pleasanter to go along the edge of the woods, through the field in the rear of the farmhouse, whence you see only its gray roof and its haystacks, than to keep the road by its door! This we think as we return behind Martial Miles's. 

I observed that many pignuts had fallen yesterday, though quite green. 

Some of the Umbelliferoe, now gone to seed, are very pretty to examine. The Cicuta maculata, for instance, the concave umbel is so well spaced, the different um-bellets (?) like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament. 

Hear a hylodes in the swamp.

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

Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. See note to September 21, 1859 ("And now at last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over) and the taller, brighter-yellow above. Those shell-less slugs which eat apples eat these also."); October 15, 1857 ("I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus")

I see a cricket feeding on an apple. See October 2, 1857 ("Since the cooler weather many crickets are seen clustered on warm banks and by sunny wall-sides."); See also October 11, 1857 ("These are cricket days.")

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying, an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years. See October 2, 1857 ("In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent") See also  October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds");  and note to September 24, 1859 (" Stedman Buttrick's handsome maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns.") See also May 7, 1852 ("How full of reminiscence is any fragrance!"): July 31, 1856 ("Thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 18, 1856 (" The alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal . . . reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time . . . a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern 

 The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen. See May 1, 1859 ("The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.")

The Cicuta maculata like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament. See August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio. ")

October 2. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 2

The sour scent of ferns

reminds me of the season

and of the past years.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. 

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-591002

This is the way forests are planted.

September 24. 

Thursday. A. M. — Up the Assabet. 

The river is considerably raised and also muddied by the recent rains. 

I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth. He stopped near the foot of a hemlock, and, hastily pawing a hole with his fore feet, dropped the nut, covered it up, and re treated part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments. 

I approached the shore to examine the deposit, and he, descending betrayed no little anxiety for his treasure and made two or three motions to recover the nut before he retreated. Digging there, I found two pignuts joined together, with their green shells on, buried about an inch and a half in the soil, under the red hemlock leaves. 

This, then, is the way forests are planted. This nut must have been brought twenty rods at least and was buried at just the right depth. If the squirrel is killed, or neglects its deposit, a hickory springs up.


P. M. — I walk to that very dense and handsome white pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp. It is about fifteen rods square, the trees large, ten to twenty inches in diameter. It is separated by a wall from another pine wood with a few oaks in it on the south east, and about thirty rods north and west are other pine and oak woods. 

Standing on the edge of the wood and looking through it,—for it is quite level and free from underwood, mostly bare, red-carpeted ground, you would have said that there was not a hardwood tree in it, young or old, though I afterward found on one edge a middling-sized sassafras, a birch, a small tupelo, and two little scarlet oaks, but, what was more interesting, I found, on looking closely over its floor, that, alternating with thin ferns and small blueberry bushes, there was, as often as every five feet, a little oak, three to twelve inches high, and in one place I found a green acorn dropped by the base of a tree. 

I was surprised, I confess, to find my own theory so perfectly proved. These oaks, apparently, find such a locality unfavorable to their growth as long as the pines stand. I saw that some had been browsed by the cows which resort to the wood for shade. As an evidence that hardwood trees would not flourish under those circumstances, I found a red maple twenty five feet high recently prostrated, as if by the wind, but still covered with green leaves, the only maple in the wood, and also two birches decaying in the same position.

The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them. You can hardly enter such a wood but you will hear a red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality.

Minott tells of their finding near a bushel of chestnuts in a rock, when blasting for the mill brook, at that ditch near Flint's Pond. He said it was a gray squirrel's depot. 

I find the Lycopodium dendroideum, not quite out, just northwest of this pine grove, in the grass. It is not the variety obscurum, which grows at Trillium Wood, is more upright-branched and branches round.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1857

I was surprised, I confess, to find my own theory so perfectly proved. See June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines,  . . .  If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.”) and The succession of forest trees (“If a pine wood is surrounded by a white-oak one chiefly, white-oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut.”)

Now and for a week a good time to collect them. See September 16, 1857 ("On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun.”); October  16, 1855 “(P. M. —To the white pine grove beyond Beck Stow’s. What has got all the cones?”) and note to September 9, 1857 (“To the Hill for white pine cones.”)

To Annursnack . . . the gleaming sunlight of mid-afternoon.

November 28. 

P. M. - To Annursnack.

Looking from the hilltop, I should say that there is more oak woodland than pine to be seen, especially in the north and northeast, but it is somewhat difficult to distinguish all in the gleaming sunlight of mid-afternoon. 

Most of the oak is quite young. As for pines, I cannot say surely which kind is most prevalent, not being certain about the most distant woods. 

I look down now on the top of a pitch pine wood southwest of Brooks's Pigeon-place, and its top, so nearly level, has a peculiarly rich and crispy look in the sun. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1860

To Annursnack. Looking from the hilltop it is somewhat difficult to distinguish all in the gleaming sunlight of mid-afternoon. See November 14, 1853 ("I climb Annursnack. . . From this hill I am struck with the smoothness and washed appearance of all the landscape. All these russet fields and swells look as if the withered grass had been combed by the flowing water. . . .. All waters — the rivers and ponds and swollen brooks — and many new ones are now seen through the leafless trees — are blue reservoirs of dark indigo amid the general russet and reddish-brown and gray.");  May 8, 1853 ("They have cut off the woods, and with them the shad-bush, on the top of Annursnack, but laid open new and wider prospects. The landscape is in some respects more interesting because of the overcast sky, threatening rain; a cold southwest wind. . . .The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look, and the evergreens were more sharply divided from them, but now they have the appearance of being merged in or buoyed up in a mist."); May 15, 1853 ("I looked again on the forest from this hill, which view may contrast with that of last Sunday. The mist produced by the leafing of the deciduous trees has greatly thickened now and lost much of its reddishness in the lighter green of expanding leaves, has be come a brownish or yellowish green, except where it has attained distinctness in the light-green foliage of the birch, the earliest distinct foliage visible in extensive great masses at a great distance, the aspen not being common. The pines and other evergreens are now fast being merged in a sea of foliage."); July 20, 1851 ("Annursnack. The under sides of the leaves, exposed by the breeze, give a light bluish tinge to the woods as I look down on them. Looking at the woods west of this hill, there is a grateful dark shade under their eastern sides, where they meet the meadows, their cool night side, — a triangular segment of night, to which the sun has set. The mountains look like waves on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff gale."); September 13, 1858 ("Looking from the top of Annursnack, the aspect of the earth generally is still a fresh green, especially the woods, but many dry fields, where apparently the June-grass has withered uncut, are a very pale tawny or lighter still. It is fit that some animals should be nearly of this color. The cougar would hardly be observed stealing across these plains. In one place I still detect the ruddiness of sorrel."); October 12, 1857 ("Looking from the Hill. . . .. I am not sure but the yellow now prevails over the red in the landscape, and even over the green. The general color of the landscape from this hill is now russet, i.e. red, yellow, etc., mingled. The maple fires are generally about burnt out. Yet I can see . . .yellows on Mt. Misery, five miles off, also on Pine Hill, and even on Mt. Tabor, indistinctly. Eastward, I distinguish red or yellow in the woods as far as the horizon, and it is most distant on that side")

Brooks's Pigeon-place. See September 13, 1858 ("A small dense flock of wild pigeons dashes by over the side of the hill, from west to east, — perhaps from Wetherbee’s to Brooks’s, for I see the latter’s pigeon place. They make a dark slate-gray impression") and note to  September 15, 1859 ("To Annursnack. Dense flocks of pigeons hurry-skurry over the hill. Pass near Brooks's pigeon-stands. There was a flock perched on his poles, and they sat so still and in such regular order there, being also the color of the wood, that I thought they were wooden figures at first.")

November 28.

P. M. - To Annursnack.

Looking from the hilltop, I should say that there was more oak woodland than pine to be seen, especially in the north and northeast, but it is somewhat difficult to distinguish all in the gleaming sunlight of midafternoon.

Most of the oak, however, is quite young.

As for pines, I cannot say surely which kind is most prevalent, not being certain about the most distant woods.

The white pine is much the most dispersed, and grows oftener in low ground than the pitch pine does.  It oftenest forms mixed woods with oak, etc., growing in straight or meandering lines, occasionally swelling into a dense grove.

The pitch pines commonly occupy a dry soil a plain or brow of a hill, often the site of an old grain-field or pasture — and are much the most seclusive, for, being a new wood, oaks, etc., have had no opportunity to grow up there, if they could.

I look down now on the top of a pitch pine wood southwest of Brooks's Pigeon-place, and its top, so nearly level, has a peculiarly rich and crispy look in the sun. Its limbs are short and its plumes stout as compared with the white pine and are of a yellowish green.

There are many handsome young walnuts ten or twelve feet high scattered over the southeast side of Annursnack, or above the orchard.  How came they there? Were they planted before a wood was cut? It is remarkable how this tree loves a hillside.

Behind G. M. Barrett's barn a scarlet oak stump 18 1/2 inches diameter and about 94 rings, which has sent up a sprout two or three years since.

On the plain just north of the east end of G. M. B.'s oaks, many oaks were sawed off about a year ago. Those I look at are seedlings and very sound and rings very distinct and handsome. Generally no sprouts from them, though one white oak sprout had been killed by frost.

• One white oak, 17 inches diameter, has 100 rings.

• A second, 16 1/2 inches diameter, also 100 rings. 

The last has two centres which coalesced at the thirtieth ring, which went round them both including old bark between them. This was an instance of natural grafting.

Many seem to be so constituted that they can respect only somebody who is dead or something which is distant.

The less you get, the happier and the richer you are.

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

That on which commerce seizes is always the very coarsest part of a fruit, — the mere husk and rind, in fact, — for her hands are very clumsy. This is what fills the holds of ships, is exported and imported, pays duties, and is finally sold at the shops.

It is a grand fact that you cannot make the finer fruits or parts of fruits matter of commerce.

You may buy a servant or slave, in short, but you cannot buy a friend.

You can't buy the finer part of any fruit— i. e. the highest use and enjoyment of it.

You cannot buy the pleasure which it yields to him who truly plucks it; you can't buy a good appetite even. 

What are all the oranges imported into England to the hips and haws in her hedges? She could easily spare the one, but not the others. Ask Wordsworth, or any of her poets, which is the most to him.

The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box trap set therein.

Whatever a great many grown-up boys are seriously engaged in is considered great and good, and, as such, is sure of the recognition of the churchman and statesman.

What, for instance, are the blue juniper berries in the pasture, which the cowboy remembers so far as they are beautiful merely, to church or state? Mere trifles which deserve and get no protection. As an object of beauty, though significant to all who really live in the country, they do not receive the protection of any community.

Anybody may grub up all that exist.

But as an article of commerce they command the attention of the civilized world. I read that “several hundred tons of them are imported annually from the continent” into England to flavor gin with; "but even this quantity,” says my author, “is quite insufficient to meet the enormous consumption of the fiery liquid, and the deficiency is made up by spirits of turpentine.”

Go to the English Government, which, of course, is representative of the people, and ask, What is the use of juniper berries ? The answer is, To flavor gin with.

This is the gross abuse of juniper berries, with which an enlightened Government — if ever there shall be one — will have nothing to do.

Let us make distinctions, call things by the right names.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1860

November 14, 1853 ("From this hill I am struck with the smoothness and washed appearance of all the landscape. All these russet fields and swells look as if the withered grass had been combed by the flowing water. Not merely the sandy roads, but the fields are swept. All waters — the rivers and ponds and swollen brooks — and many new ones are now seen through the leafless trees — are blue reservoirs of dark indigo amid the general russet and reddish-brown and gray.")

 

I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb.

November 26

November 26, 2017

In the oak wood counting the rings of a stump, I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. I detect it on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off.

This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.

Commonly they are steadily hopping about the trunks in search of insect food. Yet today the nuthatch picks out from a crevice in the bark of an oak trunk, where it was perpendicular, something white and pretty large. May it not have been the meat of an acorn?

The value of these wild fruits is not in the mere possession or eating of them, but in the sight or enjoyment of them. The very derivation of the word "fruit" would suggest this. It is from the Latin fructus, meaning that which is used or enjoyed.

If it were not so, then going a-berrying and going to market would be nearly synonymous expressions.

Of course it is the spirit in which you do a thing which makes it interesting, whether it is sweeping a room or pulling turnips.

Peaches are unquestionably a very beautiful and palatable fruit, but the gathering of them for the market is not nearly so interesting as the gathering of huckleberries for your own use.

A man fits out a ship at a great expense and sends it to the West Indies with a crew of men and boys, and after six months or a year it comes back with a load of pineapples.

Now, if no more gets accomplished than the speculator commonly aims at, — if it simply turns out what is called a successful venture, — I am less interested in this expedition than in some child's first excursion a-huckleberrying, in which it is introduced into a new world, experiences a new development, though it brings home only a gill of huckleberries in its basket.

I know that the newspapers and the politicians declare otherwise, but they do not alter the fact.

Then, I think that the fruit of the latter expedition was finer than that of the former. It was a more fruitful expedition.

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

If a New England boy's dealings with oranges and pineapples have had more to do with his development than picking huckleberries or pulling turnips have, then he rightly and naturally thinks more of the former; otherwise not.

Do not think that the fruits of New England are mean and insignificant, while those of some foreign land are noble and memorable. Our own, whatever they may be, are far more important to us than any others can be.

They educate us, and fit us to live in New England.

Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, the wild apple than the orange, the hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 26, 1860

The faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb. See October 20, 1856 ("Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. “); November 7, 1855 (". . .see a nuthatch flit with a ricochet flight across the river, and hear his gnah half uttered when he alights.”); February 24, 1854 ("Nuthatches are faintly answering each other, — tit for tat, — on different keys, — a faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah.”) and J. J. Audubon ("The notes of the White-breasted Nuthatch are remarkable on account of their nasal sound. Ordinarily they resemble the monosyllables hank, hank, kank, kank; but now and then in the spring, they emit a sweeter kind of chirp, whenever the sexes meet, or when they are feeding their young.”)

This is a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter . . . See 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 * [but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59")

 
May it not have been the meat of an acorn? See J.J. Audubon("Their bill is strong and sharp, and they not unfrequently break acorns, chestnuts, &c., by placing them in the crevices of the bark of trees, or between the splinters of a fence-rail, where they are seen hammering at them for a considerable time. “)

The fruits of New England . . .our own, whatever they may be, are far more important to us than any others can be. They educate us, and fit us to live in New England. Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, See November 23, 1860 ("Famous fruits imported from the tropics and sold in our markets — as oranges, lemons, pineapples, and bananas do not concern me so much as many an unnoticed wild berry whose beauty annually lends a new charm to some wild walk"); November 24, 1860 ("The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. "); December 22, 1850 ("Apples are now thawed. . . . are now filled with a rich, sweet cider . . . a sweet and luscious food, — in my opinion of more worth than the pineapples which are imported from the torrid zone. "); May 28, 1854 ("One of the great crops of the year . . .the blossoms of the Vacciniece, or Whortleberry Family, which affords so large a proportion of our berries. The crop of oranges, lemons, nuts, and raisins, and figs, quinces, etc., etc., not to mention tobacco and the like, is of no importance to us compared with these.")

November 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 26

Hear in this oak wood

the faint note of a nuthatch 

like a creaking limb.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  I hear the faint note of a nuthatch 

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-601126

Snow fleas

January 7.

 A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. From having been about 20° at midday, it is now (the thermometer) some 35° quite early, and at 2 p. m. 45°.

 At once the snow, which was dry and crumbling, is softened all over the country, not only in the streets, but in the remotest and slightest sled-track, where the farmer is hauling his wood; not only in yards, but in every woodland hollow and on every hill. There is a softening in the air and a softening underfoot. The softness of the air is something tangible, almost gross. 

Some are making haste to get their wood home before the snow goes, sledding, i. e. sliding, it home rapidly. 

Now if you take up a handful, it holds together and is readily fashioned and compressed into a ball, so that an endless supply of one kind of missiles is at hand. I find myself drawn toward this softened snow, even that which is stained with dung in the road, as to a friend.

I see where some crow has pecked at the now thawing dung here. How provident is Nature, who permits a few kernels of grain to pass undigested through the entrails of the ox, for the food of the crow and dove, etc.! 

As soon as I reach the neighborhood of the woods I begin to see the snow-fleas, more than a dozen rods from woods, amid a little goldenrod, etc., where, me- thinks, they must have come up through the snow. Last night there was not one to be seen. 

The frozen apples are thawed again.

You hear (in the house) the unusual sound of the eaves running. 

Saw a large flock of goldfinches running and feeding amid the weeds in a pasture, just like tree sparrows. Then flitted to birch trees, whose seeds probably they eat. Heard their twitter and mew.

Nature so fills the soil with seeds that I notice, where travellers have turned off the road and made a new track for several rods, the intermediate narrow space is soon clothed with a little grove which just fills it. 

See, at White Pond, where squirrels have been feeding on the fruit of a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it. The snow for a great space is covered with the outer shells, etc.; and, especially, close to the base of this and the neighboring trees of other species, where there is a little bare ground, there is a very large collection of the shells, most of which have been gnawed quite in two.

The white pine cones show still as much as ever, hanging sickle-wise about the tops of the trees. 

I saw yesterday the track of a fox, and in the course of it a place where he had apparently pawed to the ground, eight or ten inches, and on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse, probably rejected by him. A little further was a similar hole with some fur in it. Did he smell the dead or living mouse beneath and paw to it, or rather, catching it on the surface, make that hollow in his efforts to eat it? It would be remarkable if a fox could smell and catch a mouse passing under the snow beneath him! You would say that he need not make such a hole in order to eat the mouse.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1860

A thaw begins, with a southerly wind. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. "); January 7, 1855 (“On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind . . . and find it unexpectedly wet in the street, and the manure is being washed off the ice into the gutter. It is, in fact, a January thaw.”); January 7, 1860 ("A thaw begins, with a southerly wind.")

I begin to see the snow-fleas. Last night there was not one to be seen. See January 7, 1851 ("I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the weather was mild and the snow damp "); See also January 5, 1854 (“This afternoon. . .the snow is covered with snow-fleas. Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for half a mile in the tracks of a woodchopper in deep snow. These are the first since the snow came.”); January 15, 1852 (“For the first time this winter I notice snow-fleas this afternoon in Walden Wood. ”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Snow Flea

The white pine cones show still as much as ever, hanging sickle-wise about the tops of the trees. See February 25, 1860 ("The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet”); March 5, 1860 (“White pine cones half fallen. ”)

1 saw yesterday the track of a fox, and in the course of it a place where he had apparently pawed to the ground, eight or ten inches, and on the just visible ground lay frozen a stale-looking mouse. See  February 2, 1860 (“I have myself seen one place where a mouse came to the surface to-day in the snow. Probably [the fox] has smelt out many such galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the snow.”)

January 7. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 7

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