The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might.

November 12.

I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed down to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more.

What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveller's is but a barren and comfortless condition.

Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature, — house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather.

What is a farm, house and land, office or shop, but a settlement in nature under the most favorable conditions? It is insignificant, and a merely negative good fortune, to be provided with thick garments against cold and wet, an unprofitable, weak, and defensive condition, compared with being able to extract some exhilaration, some warmth even, out of cold and wet themselves, and to clothe them with our sympathy.

The rich man buys woollens and furs, and sits naked and shivering still in spirit, besieged by cold and wet. But the poor Lord of Creation, cold and wet he makes to warm him, and be his garments.

Tansy is very fresh still in some places.

Tasted to-day a black walnut, a spherical and corrugated nut with a large meat, but of a strong oily taste.

November 12, 2020

8 P. M. — Up river to Hubbard Bathing-Place.

Moon nearly full.

A mild, almost summer evening after a very warm day, alternately clear and overcast. The meadows, with perhaps a little mist on them, look as if covered with frost in the moonlight.

At first it is quite calm, and I see only where a slight wave or piece of wet driftwood along the shore reflects a flash of light, suggesting that we have come to a season of clearer air. This occasional slight sparkling on either hand along the water ' s edge attends me.

I come out now on the water to see our little river broad and stately as the Merrimack or still larger tides, for though the shore be but a rod off, the meeting of land and water being concealed, it is as good as if a quarter of a mile distant, and the near bank is like a distant hill.

There is now and of late months no smell of muskrats, which is probably confined to the spring or rutting season.

While the sense of seeing is partly slumbering, that of hearing is more wide awake than by day, and, now that the wind is rising, I hear distinctly the chopping of every little wave under the bow of my boat.

Hear no bird, only the loud plunge of a muskrat from time to time.

The moon is wading slowly through broad squadrons of clouds, with a small coppery halo, and now she comes forth triumphant and burnishes the water far and wide, and makes the reflections more distinct.

Trees stand bare against the sky again. This the first month in which they do.

I hear one cricket singing still, faintly deep in the bank, now after one whitening of snow. His theme is life immortal. The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might.

The dark squadrons of hostile clouds have now swept over the face of the moon, and she appears unharmed and riding triumphant in her chariot. Suddenly they dwindle and melt away in her mild, and all-pervading light, dissipated like the mists of the morning. They pass away and are forgotten like bad dreams.

Landed at the bathing-place.

There is no sound of a frog from all these waters and meadows which a few months ago resounded so with them; not even a cricket or the sound of a mosquito.

I can fancy that I hear the sound of peeping hylodes ringing in my ear, but it is all fancy.

How short their year! How early they sleep! Nature is desert and iron-bound; she has shut her door. How different from the muggy nights of summer, teeming with life! That resounding life is now buried in the mud, returned into Nature's womb, and most of the birds have retreated to the warm belt of the earth.

Yet still from time to time a pickerel darts away. And still the heavens are unchanged; the same starry geometry looks down on their active and their torpid state.

And the first frog that puts his eye forth from the mud next spring shall see the same everlasting starry eyes ready to play at bo-peep with him, for they do not go into the mud.

However, you shall find the muskrats lively enough now at night, though by day their cabins appear like deserted cabins. When I paddle near one, I hear the sudden plunge of one of its inhabitants, and some times see two or three at once swimming about it. Now is their day.

It is remarkable that these peculiarly aboriginal and wild animals, whose nests are perhaps the largest of any creatures hereabouts, should still so abound in the very midst of civilization and erect their large and conspicuous cabins at the foot of our gardens. However, I notice that unless there is a strip of meadow and water on the garden side they erect their houses on the wild side of the stream.

The hylodes, as it is the first frog heard in the spring, so it is the last in the autumn. I heard it last, me thinks, about a month ago.

I do not remember any hum of insects for a long time, though I heard a cricket to-day.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 12, 1853

The meadows, with perhaps a little mist on them, look as if covered with frost in the moonlight. See November 12, 1851 ("The moonlight reflected from (apparently) the fine frost crystals on the withered grass"). See also September 22, 1854 ("By moonlight all is simple.."); 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."); December 10, 1856 ("The nights are light on account of the snow, and, there being a moon, there is no distinct interval between the day and night."); and Li Po :(Thoughts in Night Quiet):

Seeing moonlight here at my bed,

and thinking it’s frost on the ground,

I look up, gaze at the mountain moon,

then back, dreaming of my old home.

Trees stand bare against the sky again. This the first month in which they do. See November 12, 1851 ("The openness of the leafless woods is particularly apparent now by moonlight.")

 

And still the heavens are unchanged; the same starry geometry looks down. See November 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while always to go to the waterside when there is but little light in the heavens and see the heavens and the stars reflected. There is double the light that there is elsewhere, and the reflection has the force of a great silent companion."); See also October 28, 1852 ("After whatever revolutions in my moods and experiences, when I come forth at evening, as if from years of confinement to the house, I see the few stars which make the constellation of the Lesser Bear in the same relative position, - the everlasting geometry of the stars.") 

You shall find the muskrats lively enough now at night . .  . Now is their day. See October 7, 1852 ("The muskrats have begun to erect their cabins . . .  Do they build them in the night? "); November 7, 1858 ("I pass a musquash-house, apparently begun last night."); November 16, 1852 ("Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are quite conspicuous half a mile distant, and are of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

The moon is wading slowly through broad squadrons of clouds, with a small coppery halo, and now she comes forth triumphant and burnishes the water far and wide, and makes the reflections more distinct. See August 12, 1851 ("The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate what cloud will obscure the moon and what she will triumph over. . . And when she has fought her way through all the squadrons of her foes, and rides majestic in a clear sky, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his heart.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November Moonlight

The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might. See November 12, 1851 ("The ground is frozen and echoes to my tread. There are absolutely no crickets to be heard now. They are heard, then, till the ground freezes.") See also 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."); November 8, 1859 (" I hear a small z-ing cricket."); November 11, 1855 ("Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. "); November 11, 1858 ("I afterward hear a few of the common cricket on the side of Clamshell. Thus they are confined now to the sun on the south sides of hills and woods. They are quite silent long before sunset. "); November 13, 1851 ("Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters."); November 13, 1858 ("Of course frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs."); November 15, 1859 ("I hear in several places a faint cricket note, either a fine z-ing or a distincter creak, also see and hear a grasshopper's crackling flight."); November 19, 1857 ("Turning up a stone on Fair Haven Hill, I find many small dead crickets about the edges, which have endeavored to get under it and apparently have been killed by the frost"); November 22, 1851 ("He turned over a stone, and I saw under it many crickets and ants still lively, which had gone into winter quarters there apparently. . . . That is the reason, then, that I have not heard the crickets lately.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

November 12. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 12

The moon is a small

halo wading slowly through 

broad squadrons of clouds.

With a little mist 

and moonlight the meadows look

as covered with frost.

I hear one cricket – 

his theme is life immortal

now after one snow.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The last cricket, full of cheer and faith

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-531112

 

After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.

January 8. 

Began to rain last evening, and rained some in the night. To-day it is very warm and pleasant. 

2 p. m. — Walk to Walden. Thermometer 48 at 2 p.m. 

We are suddenly surrounded by a warm air from some other part of the globe. What a change! Yesterday morning we walked on dry and squeaking snow, but before night, without any rain, merely by the influence of that warm air which had migrated to us, softening and melting the snow, we began to slump in it.

Now, since the rain of last night, the softest portions of the snow are dissolved in the street, revealing and leaving the filth which has accumulated there upon the firmer foundation, and we walk with open coats, charmed with the trickling of ephemeral rills. 

After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike. 

How changed are our feelings and thoughts by this more genial sky! When I get to the railroad I listen from time to time to hear some sound out of the distance which will express this mood of Nature. The cock and the hen, that pheasant which we have domesticated, are perhaps the most sensitive to atmospheric changes of any domestic animals. You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season, yielding to the influence of the south wind, or the drawling note of the hen dreaming of eggs that are to be. 

These are the sounds that fill the air, and no hum of insects. They are affected like voyagers on approaching the land. 

We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. 

I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. 

Walden, which was covered with snow, is now covered with shallow puddles and slosh of a pale glaucous slate-color. The sloshy edges of the puddles are the frames of so many wave-shaped mirrors in which the leather-colored oak leaves, and the dark-green pines and their stems, on the hillside, are reflected. 

We see no fresh tracks. The old tracks of the rabbit, now after the thaw, are shaped exactly like a horse shoe, an unbroken curve. Those of the fox which has run along the side of the pond are now so many snowballs, raised as much above the level of the water-darkened snow as at first they sank beneath it. The snow, having been compressed by their weight, resists the melting longer. 

Indeed, I see far across the pond, half a mile distant, what looks like a perfectly straight row of white stones, — some fence or other work of art, — stretching twenty rods along the bare shore. There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated owing to the looming, and are referred to the dark background against which they are seen. When I know that they are on the ice, they look like white stepping-stones. 

I hear the goldfinch notes (they may be linarias), and see a few on the top of a small black birch by the pond-shore, of course eating the seed. Thus they distinguish its fruit from afar. When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.] 

We have a fine moonlight evening after, and as by day I have noticed that the sunlight reflected from this moist snow had more glitter and dazzle to it than when the snow was dry, so now I am struck by the brighter sheen from the snow in the moonlight. All the impurities in the road are lost sight of, and the melting snow shines like frostwork. 

When returning from Walden at sunset, the only cloud we saw was a small purplish one, exactly conforming to the outline of Wachusett, — which it concealed, — as if on that mountain only the universal moisture was at that moment condensed.

The commonest difference between a public speaker who has not enjoyed the advantage of the highest  education in the popular sense, at school and college, and one who has, is that the former will pronounce a few words, and use a few more, in a manner in which the scholars have agreed not to, and the latter will occasionally quote a few Latin and even Greek words with more confidence, and, if the subject is the derivation of words, will maintain a wise silence.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1860

You cannot listen a moment such a day as this but you will hear, from far or near, the clarion of the cock celebrating this new season. See January 8, 1855 ("It is now a clear warm and sunny day. There is a healthy earthy sound of cock-crowing."); January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs."); January 23, 1858 ("The wonderfully mild and pleasant weather_continues. The ground has been bare since the 11th. . . . The sun, and cockcrowing, bare ground, etc., etc., remind me of March.")

We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow. I see the jay and hear his scream oftener for the thaw. See January 7, 1851 ("January thaw. Take away the snow and it would not be winter but like many days in the fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener heard.")

There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, like white stepping-stones. See January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,");January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 8

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 ©  2009-2023

First sounds of awakened nature in the spring.

April 17. 

April 17, 2019

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The river, which had got down on the 10th so that I could not cross the meadows, is up again on account of snow and rain, so that I push with difficulty straight to Mantatuket's Rock, but, I believe, is already falling. 

Many grackles and robins are feeding on those strips of meadow just laid bare.

It is still rather cold and windy, and I listen for new birds under the lee of the Rock woods in vain; but I hear the hum of bees on a willow there, and this fine susurrus makes the weather seem warmer than it is. At the same time I hear the low stuttering of the Rana halecina from the Hunt meadow (call it the Winthrop meadow).

How pleasing and soothing are some of the first and least audible sounds of awakened nature in the spring, as this first humming of bees, etc., and the stuttering of frogs! They cannot be called musical, — are no more even than a noise, so slight that we can endure it. But it is in part an expression of happiness, an ode that is sung and whose burden fills the air. It reminds me of the increased genialness of nature. 

The air which was so lately void and silent begins to resound as it were with the breathing of a myriad fellow-creatures, and even the unhappy man, on the principle that misery loves company, is soothed by this infinite din of neighbors.

I have listened for the notes of various birds, and now, in this faint hum of bees, I hear as it were the first twittering of the bird Summer. Go ten feet that way, to where the northwest wind comes round the hill, and you hear only the dead mechanical sound of the blast and your thoughts recur to winter, but stand as much this way in the sun and in the lee of this bush, and your charmed ears may hear this faint susurrus weaving the web of summer. The notes of birds are interrupted, but the hum of insects is incessant.

I suppose that the motion of the wings of the small tipulidae which have swarmed for some weeks produced a humming appreciated by some ears. Perhaps the phoebe heard and was charmed by it. Thus gradually the spaces of the air are filled. Nature has taken equal care to cushion our ears on this finest sound and to inspire us with the strains of the wood thrush and poet. We may say that each gnat is made to vibrate its wings for man's fruition. 

In short, we hear but little music in the world which charms us more than this sound produced by the vibration of an insect's wing and in some still and sunny nook in spring.

 A wood tortoise on bank; first seen, water so high.

I heard lately the voice of a hound hunting by itself. What an awful sound to the denizens of the wood! That relentless, voracious, demonic cry, like the voice of a fiend! At hearing of which, the fox, hare, marmot, etc., tremble for their young and themselves, imagining the worst. This, however, is the sound which the lords of creation love to accompany and follow, with their bugles and "mellow horns" conveying a similar dread to the hearers instead of whispering peace to the hare's palpitating breast.

 A partridge drums.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 17, 1859

I hear the hum of bees on a willow there, and this fine susurrus makes the weather seem warmer than it is. See April 17, 1852 ("I smelt the willow catkins to-day, tender and innocent after this rude winter . . . A mild, sweet, vernal scent . . . attractive to bees"); April 17, 1855 (“The second sallow catkin (or any willow) I have seen in blossom . . . but find already a bee curved close on each half-opened catkin, intoxicated with its early sweet,. . .So quickly and surely does a bee find the earliest flower . . . No matter what pains you take, probably —undoubtedly—an insect will have found the first flower before you”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

How pleasing and soothing are some of the first and least audible sounds of awakened nature in spring. See April 3, 1858 ("There is no pause to the hum of the bees all this warm day. It is a very simple but pleasing and soothing sound, this susurrus, thus early in the spring.”); . 


In the lee of this bush, and your charmed ears may hear this faint susurrus weaving the web of summer. See April 6, 1854 ("Maples resound with the hum of honey-bees, and you see thousands of them about the flowers against the sky. This susurrus carries me forward some months toward summer -- like a summer's dream.")

We walk through almost invisible puddles, in which we see the trees reflected.

February 15. 

P. M. — Up river to Fair Haven Pond.

I thought, by the peculiar moaning sound of the wind about the dining-room at noon, that we should have a rain-storm. I heard only one blast through some crack, but no doubt that betrayed a pluvious breath.

I am surprised to find how much it has thawed in the street, though there has been no rain, only a south wind. There is already water standing over an icy foundation, and the dirt of the street is more obvious, the snow having partly melted away from it. We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. 

I see some remarkable overflowed ice. Here is one shield of an oval form, some twenty feet long, very regularly and interestingly mottled with yellowish or dead leaf color, the stain of the mead, which by some law has been regularly distributed through the white, yet so delicately shaded off that it almost makes you dizzy to look at it. 

It reminds me of the beginning of a higher organization, or bony structure in a molluscous fish. The overflow must have been from the centre, where it burst up and flowed each way. 

In the proper light I am surprised to detect very fine and perfectly regular curving rays within the ice, just like the veins of some leaves, only finer and more regular, bilateral, perhaps a trace of the water as it flowed, — say like the lines of a cowry shell. It is but imperfectly suggested in the drawing. 

Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. 

• The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.
• A distant white birch, erect on a hill against the white, misty sky, looks, with its fine twigs, so distinct and black, like a millipede a crawling up to heaven. 
• The white oak leaves against the darker green of pines, now moist, are far more reddish. 

Against Bittern Cliff I feel the first drop strike the right slope of my nose and run down the ravine there. Such is the origin of rivers. Not till half a mile further my doubting companion feels another on his nose also, and I get one in my eye, and soon after I see the countless dimples in the puddles on the ice. 

So measured and deliberate is Nature always. Then the gentle, spring like rain begins, and we turn about. 

The sound of it pattering on the dry oak leaves, where young oaks thickly cover a hillside, is just like that of wind stirring them, when first heard, but is steady and monotonous and so betrayed. 

We rejoice to be wetted, and the very smell of wet woollen clothes exhilarates us. 

I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts, a narrower and thinner one about twenty inches below the first, often connected with it by icicles at the edge. Thus each rise was recorded.


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

We walk through almost invisible puddles on the river and meadows, in which we see the trees, etc., reflected. See January 13, 1854 ("Walden is covered with puddles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees"); February 7, 1857 (“The water on the ice is for the most part several inches deep, and trees reflected in it appear as when seen through a mist. ”)

Against the thickening air, trees are more and more distinct. The apple trees, so moist, are blacker than ever.  See  February 16, 1860 ("I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it.") Compare October 31, 1858 ("Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under."); November 1, 1858 ("Now you easily detect where larches grow, viz. in the swamp north of Sleepy Hollow. They are far more distinct than at any other season.")

I forgot to say (the 14th) that there are two of those ice-belts. See February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.") and note to February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places")

February 14. February 15. February 16

The earth is our ship.

January 2

January 2, 2019

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. 

Going up the hill through Stow’s young oak wood land, I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. This is the voice of the wood now. 

It would be comparatively still and more dreary here in other respects, if it were not for these leaves that hold on. It sounds like the roar of the sea, and is enlivening and inspiriting like that, suggesting how all the land is seacoast to the aerial ocean. It is the sound of the surf, the rut of an unseen ocean, billows of air breaking on the forest like water on itself or on sand and rocks. It rises and falls, wells and dies away, with agreeable alternation as the sea surf does. Perhaps the landsman can foretell a storm by it. 

It is remarkable how universal these grand murmurs are, these backgrounds of sound, —the surf, the wind in the forest, waterfalls, etc.,-—which yet to the ear and in their origin are essentially one voice, the earth-voice, the breathing or snoring of the creature. 

The earth is our ship, and this is the sound of the wind in her rigging as we sail. 

Just as the inhabitant of Cape Cod hears the surf ever breaking on its shores, so we countrymen hear this kindred surf on the leaves of the forest. Regarded as a voice, — though it is not articulate, — (but this is nearer a consonant sound), labials, dentals, palatals, sibilants, mutes, aspirate, etc., so this may be called folial or frondal, produced by air driven against the leaves, and comes nearest to our sibilants or as pirate. 

The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown. 

Michaux said that white oaks would be distinguished by their retaining their leaves in the winter, but as far as my observation goes they cannot be so distinguished. All our large oaks may retain a few leaves at the base of the lower limbs and about the trunks, though only a few, and the white oak scarcely more than the others, while the same trees when young are all alike thickly clothed in the winter, but the leaves of the white oaks are the most withered and shrivelled of them all. 

Why do young oaks retain their leaves while old ones shed them? Why do they die on the stem, having some life at the base in the one case, while they wither through at the base in the other case? Is it because in the former case they have more sap and vigor? 

There being some snow on the ground, I can easily distinguish the forest on the mountains (the Peterboro Hills, etc.) and tell which are forested, those parts and those mountains being dark like a shadow. I cannot distinguish the forest thus far in the summer. 

The white pines, etc., as I look down on them from this hill, are now darker, as becomes the sterner season, like a frost-bitten apple, — a sombre green.

When I hear the hypercritical quarrelling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, — Mr. Webster, perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. Kirkham’s rule, — I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. 

Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat. 

The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk, — turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively, — but so the beautiful walkers are not made. 

Mediaeval, or law, Latin seems to have invented the word “forest,” not being satisfied with silva, nemus, etc. Webster makes it from the same root with “L. foris, Fr. hors, and the Saxon faran, to go, to depart.” The allied words “all express distance from cities and civilization, and are from roots expressing departure or wandering,” —as if this newer term were needed to describe those strange, wild woods furthest from the centres of civilization. 

The earth, where quite bare, is now, and for five or six weeks, russet without any lively red, —not golden-russet. 

I notice on the top of the Cliffs that the extremities of the smooth sumach are generally dead and withered, while those of the staghorn, which art so downy, are alive. Is this a prevailing difference? Which extends furthest north? 

The outside bark-scales of some large pitch pines in the midst of the woods having dropped off gives a peculiar flatness to the ridges, as if it had been shaved or scraped. 

Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Tells of Jake Lakin losing a hound so, which went under the ice and was drowned below the Holt; was found afterward by Sted Buttrick, his collar taken off and given to Lakin. They used to cross the river there on the ice, going to market, formerly. 

Looking from the southwest side of Walden toward Heywood's Peak before sunset, the brown light on the oak leaves is almost dazzling.

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

I listen to the sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. See November 1, 1857 (“When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus”)

First of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. See December 16, 1859 (“How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in conventional Latinisms!”); February 3, 1860 ("Any fool can make a rule /  And every fool will mind it.")

Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Compare January 30, 1855 ("Minott . . .told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him.")

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

The sharp dry rustle

of withered oak leaves is the

voice of the wood now –

The earth is our ship

and this is the sound of the

rigging as we sail.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The earth is our ship.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt590102

All at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet.

November 21.

P. M. – Up Assabet. 

Paddling along, a little above the Hemlocks, I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. I perceived that it was distant, and therefore the locomotive, the moment that the key was changed from a very high to a low one. Was it because distant sounds are commonly on a low key? 

Just above the grape-hung birches, my attention was drawn to a singular-looking dry leaf or parcel of leaves on the shore about a rod off. Then I thought it might be the dry and yellowed skeleton of a bird with all its ribs; then the shell of a turtle, or possibly some large dry oak leaves peculiarly curved and cut; and then, all at once, I saw that it was a woodcock, perfectly still, with its head drawn in, standing on its great pink feet. 

I had, apparently, noticed only the yellowish-brown portions of the plumage, referring the dark-brown to the shore behind it. May it not be that the yellowish-brown markings of the bird correspond somewhat to its skeleton? At any rate with my eye steadily on it from a point within a rod, I did not for a considerable time suspect it to be a living creature. 

I was paddling along slowly, on the lookout for what was to be seen, when my attention was caught by a strange-looking leaf or bunch of leaves on the shore, close to the water’s edge, a rod distant. I thought to myself, I may as well investigate that, and so pushed slowly toward it, my eyes resting on it all the while. It then looked like a small shipwrecked hulk and, strange to say, like the bare skeleton of a fowl that has been picked and turned yellowish, resting on its breast-bone, the color of a withered black or red oak leaf. Again I thought it must be such a leaf or cluster of leaves peculiarly curved and cut or torn on the upper edges. 

The chubby bird dashed away zigzag, carrying its long tongue-case carefully before it, over the witch hazel bushes. 

Examining the shore after it had flown with a whistling flight, I saw that there was a clear space of mud between the water and the edge of ice-crystals about two inches wide, melted so far by the lapse of the water, and all along the edge of the ice, for a rod or two at least, there was a hole where it had thrust its bill down, probing, every half-inch, frequently closer. Some animal life must be collected at that depth just in that narrow space, savory morsels for this bird. 

This is its walk, – the portion of the shore, the narrow strip, still kept open and unfrozen between the water's edge and the ice. The sportsman might discover its neighborhood by these probings.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1857

I hear, I think, a boy whistling upon the bank above me, but immediately perceive that it is the whistle of the locomotive a mile off in that direction. See December 31, 1853 ("I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. . "); August 15, 1854 ("The locomotive whistle, far southwest, sounds like a bell.”); March 22, 1856 ("I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad")

The sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood.

November 1. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond over Cliffs.

Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.

When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees, – a sharper susurrus. 

Going over the high field west of the cut, my foot strikes a rattle-pod in the stubble, and it is betrayed. From that faint sound I knew it must be there, and went back and found it. I could have told it as well in the dark. How often I have found pennyroyal by the fragrance it emitted when bruised by my feet! 

The lowest and most succulent oak sprouts in exposed places are red or green longest. Large trees quite protected from sun and wind will be greener still. 

The larches are at the height of their change. 

I see much witch-hazel in the swamp by the south end of the Abiel Wheeler grape meadow. Some of it is quite fresh and bright. Its bark is alternate white and smooth reddish-brown, the small twigs looking as if gossamer had lodged on and draped them. What a lively spray it has, both in form and color! Truly it looks as if it would make divining-rods, – as if its twigs knew where the true gold was and could point to it. The gold is in their late blossoms. Let them alone and they never point down to earth. They impart to the whole hillside a speckled, parti-colored look. 

I see the common prinos berries partly eaten about the hole of a mouse under a stump. 

As I return by the Well Meadow Field and then Wheeler’s large wood, the sun shines from over Fair Haven Hill into the wood, and I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad stems of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn. 

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. 

Jersey tea has perhaps the most green leaves of any shrub at present.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 1, 1857


The larches are at the height of their change. See November 1, 1858 (Now you easily detect where larches grow ... They are far more distinct than at any other season. They are very regular soft yellow pyramids, as I see them from the Poplar Hill""); November 4, 1855 (“Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.”); October 27 1855 (“Larches are yellowing.”); October 24, 1852 (“The larches in the swamps are now conspicuously yellow and ready for their fall. They can now be distinguished at a distance. ”)

A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed. See August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”)

This dry crisp rustle – 

withered leaves on oak trees, a 

sharper susurrus. 

A fine, springlike morning.

December 17.

9.30 A. M. — To Hill. 

A remarkably fine, springlike morning. 

The earth all bare; the sun so bright and warm; the steam curling up from every fence and roof, and carried off at an angle by the slight northwesterly air.

After those rainy days the air is apparently uncommonly clear, and hence (?) the sound of cock-crowing is so sweet, and I hear the sound of the sawmill even at the door, also the cawing of crows.

There is a little ice, which makes it as yet good walking, in the roads. 

The peculiar brightness and sunniness may be partly owing to the sun being reflected through the cleansed air from the more than russet, the bleached, surface of the earth. 

Methinks every squirrel will be out now. 

This is the morning. Ere long the wind will rise and this season will be over. There will probably be some wrack in the afternoon sky. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 17, 1855

After those rainy days the air is apparently uncommonly clear, and I hear the sound of the sawmill even at the door, also the cawing of crows. See March 15, 1854 ("The sound of Barrett's sawmill in the still morning comes over the water very loud.");April 15, 1856 ("I hear very distinctly Barrett’s sawmill at my landing."); May 8, 1857 ("I hear the sound of Barrett's sawmill with singular distinctness."); February 16, 1855 (" Sounds sweet and musical through this air, as crows, cocks, and striking on the rails at a distance.”) January 12, 1855 ("Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. . . .It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side. What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.”); See also December 31, 1853 (“I hear very distinctly from the railroad causeway the whistle of the locomotive on the Lowell road. . . . He that hath ears, let him hear. Sugar is not so sweet to the palate, as sound to the healthy ear.”);

Sounds of the deep woods at sunset.

May 12

May 12











Cold enough for a fire this many a day. 

6 A. M. — To Hill.

I hear the myrtle-bird’s  te-e-e, te-e-e, t t t, t t t, clear flute-like whistle, and see eight or ten crow blackbirds together. 

P. M. —To Lee’s Cliff. 

C. says he saw upland plover two or three nights ago. The sweet-gale begins to leaf. 

I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees, etc., etc. I have found half a dozen robins’ nests with eggs already, —one in an elm, two in a Salix alba, one in a Salix nigra, one in a pitch pine, etc., etc. 

I find the partridge-nest of the 7th partially covered with dry oak leaves, and two more eggs only, three in all, cold. Probably the bird is killed.

As I approach the owl’s nest, I see her run past the hole up into that part of the hollow above it, and probably she was there when I thought she had flown on the 7th. I look in, and at first did not know what I saw. One of the three remaining eggs was hatched, and a little downy white young one, two or three times as long as an egg, lay helpless between the two remaining eggs. Also a dead white-bellied mouse (Mus leucopus) lay with them, its tail curled round one of the eggs. 

Wilson says of his red owl (Strix asio), — with which this apparently corresponds, and not with the mottled, though my egg is not “pure white,” —that “the young are at first covered with a whitish down.”

Hear an oven-bird. 

Passing on into the Miles meadow, am struck by the interesting tender green of the just springing foliage of the aspens, apples, cherries (more reddish), etc. It is now especially interesting while you can see through it, and also the tender yellowish-green grass shooting up in the bare river meadows and prevailing over the dark and sere.

Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser. 

From beyond the orchard see a large bird far over the Cliff Hill, which, with my glass, I soon make out to be a fish hawk advancing. Even at that distance, half a mile off, I distinguish its gull-like body, — pirate-like fishing body fit to dive, — and that its wings do not curve upward at the ends like a hen-hawk’s (at least I could not see that they did), but rather hang down. It comes on steadily, bent on fishing, with long and heavy undulating wings, with an easy, sauntering flight, over the river to the pond, and hovers over Pleasant Meadow a long time, hovering from time to time in one spot, when more than a hundred feet high, then making a very short circle or two and hovering again, then sauntering off against the wood side. At length he reappears, passes downward over the shrub oak plain and alights on an oak (of course now bare), standing this time apparently length wise on the limb. 

Soon takes to wing again and goes to fishing down the stream a hundred feet high. When just below Bittern Cliff, I observe by its motions that it observes something. It makes a broad circle of observation in its course, lowering itself somewhat; then, by one or two steep sidewise flights, it reaches the water, and, as near as intervening trees would let me see, skims over it and endeavored to clutch its prey in passing. It fails the first time, but probably succeeds the second. Then it leisurely wings its way to a tall bare tree on the east end of the Cliffs, and there we leave it apparently pluming itself. 

It had a very white belly, and indeed appeared all white be neath its body. I saw broad black lines between the white crown and throat. 

The brown thrasher is a powerful singer; he is a quarter of a mile off across the river, when he sounded within fifteen rods. 

Hear the night-warbler. 

Slippery elm leaf more forward than the common; say yesterday; only young common yet. White ash begins to shed pollen at Lee’s; yesterday, or possibly day before, but no leaves on the same. 

Hear the first creak of a cricket beneath the rocks there, so serene and composing. Methinks it surpasses the song of all birds; sings from everlasting to everlasting. 

Apparently a thousand little slender catchflies shooting up on the top of the cliff.

The red oak there leafed a day or two, or one day earlier than hickory, and the black near it not yet. Rhus radicans leafed there a day or two. 

See one white-throat sparrow still.  The hearing of the cricket whets my eyes. 

I see one or two long lighter and smoother streaks across the rippled pond from west to east, which preserve their form remarkably, only are bent somewhat at last. The zephyr does not strike the surface from over the broad button-bush row till after a rod or so, leaving a perfectly smooth border, with a fine, irregular shaded edge where the rippling begins.

I now begin to distinguish where at a distance the Amelanchier Botryapium, with its white against the russet, is waving in the wind. 

Under Lee’s Cliff, about one rod east of the ash, am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines, — not a tinge of scarlet, —the leaves and stem also not purplish, but a yellowish and light green, with leaves differently shaped from the common, the parts, both flower and leaves, more slender, and the leaves not so flat, but inclining to fold. 

One flower of the Polygonatum pubescens open there; probably may shed pollen to-morrow.

Returning over Conantum, I direct my glass toward the dead tree on Cliffs, and am surprised to see the fish hawk still sitting there, about an hour after he first alighted; and now I find that he is eating a fish, which he had under his feet on the limb and ate as I have already described. At this distance his whole head looked white with his breast. 

Just before sundown, we take our seats before the owl’s nest and sit perfectly still and await her appearance. We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1855

Cold enough for a fire this many a day. See May 21, 1855 ( “[C]old weather, indeed, from the 20th to 23d inclusive. Sit by fires, and sometimes wear a greatcoat and expect frosts.”);  May 21, 1860 (“Cold, at 11 A.M. 50°; and sit by a fire”; May 22, 1860 (Another cold and wet day, requiring fire.”)

Under Lee’s Cliff, . . . am surprised to find some pale-yellow columbines . . .  See  March 18,1853 (" At Conantum Cliff the columbines have started and the saxifrage even,. . .Both these grow there in high and dry chinks in the face of tire cliff, where no soil appears, and the sunnier the exposure the more advanced."); April 27, 1852 ("[The early saxifrage] can take advantage of a perpendicular cliff where the snow cannot lie and fronting the south. In exactly the same places grows the columbine, now well budded and seven or eight inches high. The higher up the rock and the more sheltered and sunny the location, the earlier they are.") April 30, 1855 (" Columbine just out; one anther sheds."); May 1, 1854 ("I think that the columbine cannot be said to have blossomed there [Lee's Cliff] before to-day, — the very earliest."); May 6, 1852(" The first columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) to-day, on Conantum."); May 16, 1852 ("Methinks the columbine here is more remarkable for growing out of the seams of the rocks than the saxifrage, and perhaps better deserves the latter name.[ Latin, saxifragus breaking rocks, from saxum rock + frangere to break] It is now in its prime, ornamental for nature's rockwork. It is a beautiful sight to see large clusters of splendid scarlet and yellow flowers growing out of a seam in the side of this gray cliff.”)

The night-warbler. See May 12, 1857 ("A night-warbler, plainly light beneath. It always flies to a new perch immediately after its song");.According to Emerson, the night warbler was "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.” See also May 17, 1858 ("Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. ...[One perhaps golden-crowned thrush. ]”); May 19, 1858 (“Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low."); May 28, 1854 ("The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost.”) 

Sounds of the deep wood

where red-tailed hawk partridge and

owl sit on their nests. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sounds of the deep woods at sunset.

                                     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