And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny
~Wordsworth
Every sunset inspires me
with the desire to go to a West
as distant and as fair as that
into which the sun goes down.
Henry Thoreau, November 21, 1850
November 16, 2017
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. November 1, 1857
If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed . . .The sun being just about to enter a long and broad dark-blue or slate-colored cloud in the horizon, a cold, dark bank, I saw that the reflection of Flint’s white house in the river, prolonged by a slight ripple so as to reach the reflected cloud, was a very distinct and luminous light blue. As the afternoons grow shorter, and the early evening drives us home to complete our chores, we are reminded of the shortness of life, . . .I leaned over a rail in the twilight on the Walden road, waiting for the evening mail to be distributed, when such thoughts visited me. I seemed to recognize the November evening as a familiar thing come round again, and yet I could hardly tell whether I had ever known it or only divined it. The November twilights just begun! November 1, 1858
November 2. 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. November 2, 1853
November 2, 2017
At Andromeda Pond, started nine black ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me . . . The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm. November 3, 1852
Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other. . . . Coming by Ebby Hubbard’s thick maple and pine wood, I see the rays of the sun, now not much above the horizon, penetrating quite through it to my side in very narrow and slender glades of light, peculiarly bright. It seems, then, that no wood is so dense but that the rays of the setting sun may penetrate twenty rods into it. November 3, 1857
November 4. The sun is once or twice its diameter above the horizon, and the mountains north of it stand out grand and distinct, a decided purple . . . Now that the sun is actually setting, the mountains are dark-blue from top to bottom. As usual, a small cloud attends the sun to the portals of the day and reflects this brightness to us, now that he is gone. But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way. November 4, 1857
November 4, 2014
November 5. Last evening, the weather being cooler, there was an arch of northern lights in the north, with some redness. Thus our winter is heralded. November 5, 1860
November 5, 2024
November 7. The sun sets while we are perched on a high rock in the north of Weston. It soon grows finger cold. November 7, 1851
November 8. Looking from Pratt’s window at sunset, I saw that purple or rosy light reflected from some old chestnut rails on the hilltop before his house. Methinks it is pinkish, even like the old cow-droppings in the pastures. So universally does Nature blush at last. The very herbage which has gone through the stomachs and intestines of the cow acquires at last a faint pinkish tinge. November 8, 1858
November 9. We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year. November 9, 1858
November 9, 2024
November 10. Dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow. November 10, 1858
November 10, 2020
Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light. The lately dark woods are open and light; the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring. The brilliancy of the autumn is wonderful, this flashing brilliancy, as if the atmosphere were phosphoric. The fall of the year is over. November 11, 1851
November 11, 2014
November 12. From Fair Haven Hill, I see a very distant, long, low dark-blue cloud in the northwest horizon beyond the mountains, and against this I see, apparently, a narrow white cloud resting on every mountain and conforming exactly to its outline . . . for twenty miles along the horizon. . .The sun having set, my long dark cloud has assumed the form of an alligator, and where the sun has just disappeared it is split into two tremendous jaws, between which glows the eternal city, its crenate lips all coppery golden, its serrate fiery teeth. Its body lies a slumbering mass along the horizon. November 12, 1852
A cold and dark afternoon, the sun being behind clouds in the west. The landscape is barren of objects, the trees being leafless, and so little light in the sky for variety. November 13, 1851
Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in early twilight. November 13, 1858
November 14. The clear, white, leafless twilight of November, and whatever more glowing sunset or Indian summer we have then is the afterglow of the year. November 14, 1853
November 14, 2022
November 14, 2020
November 15. Just after sundown, the waters become suddenly smooth, and the clear yellow light of the western sky is handsomely reflected in the water, making it doubly light to me on the water, diffusing light from below as well as above. November 15, 1853
November 15, 2023
November 16. Some of our richest days are those in which no sun shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun shines inwardly. I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. November 16, 1850
November 16, 2023
November 16, 2024
How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp - a glowing, warm brown red in the Indian-summer sun. November 17, 1859
The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. November 17, 1858
Now at sundown I hear the hooting of an owl, — hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo.. . .I rejoice that there are owls . . . This sound suggests the infinite roominess of nature, that there is a world in which owls live. November 18, 1851
The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight . . .very pale brown, bleaching, almost hoary fine grass or hay in the fields, akin to the frost which has killed it, and flakes of clear yellow sunlight falling on it here and there, — such is November. November 18, 1857
Each individual hair on every such shoot above the swamp is bathed in glowing sunlight and is directly conversant with the day god. . . .Yesterday, just before sunset, and was admiring the various rich browns of the shrub oak plain across the river, . . . I was surprised to see a broad halo travelling with me and always opposite the sun to me, at least a quarter of a mile off and some three rods wide, on the shrub oaks. . . . The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside, especially seen when the sun is low, — Quaker colors, sober ornaments, beauty that quite satisfies the eye. November 20, 1858
November 20, 2023
November 21. Seeing the sun falling . . .in an angle where this forest meets a hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, reinspiring me with all the dreams of my youth . . . It is one of the avenues to my future . . . Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. November 21, 1850
November 22. The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud . . . after a raw and louring afternoon near the beginning of winter, is a memorable phenomenon November 22, 1851
November 22, 2021
Noveomber 22, 2015
November 23. Another such a sunset to-night as the last, while I was on Conantum. November 23, 1851
November 24. Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. November 24, 1857
November 24, 2023
This afternoon the air was indescribably clear and exhilarating, and though the thermometer would have shown it to be cold, I thought that there was a finer and purer warmth than in summer . . .The warmth was hardly sensuous, but rather the satisfaction of existence . . . I experience such an interior comfort, far removed from the sense of cold, as if the thin atmosphere were rarefied by heat, were the medium of invisible flames, as if the whole landscape were one great hearthside . . .When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the sun was setting like an Indian-summer sun. There was a purple tint in the horizon. It was warm on the face of the rocks, and I could have sat till the sun disappeared, to dream there. It was a mild sunset such as is to be attended to.Just as the sun shines into us warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and re-creates us. November 25, 1850
That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine. November 25, 1851.
When returning between Bear Hill and the railroad, the sun had set and there was a very clear amber light in the west, and, turning about, we were surprised at the darkness in the east, the crescent of night, almost as if the air were thick, a thick snow-storm were gathering, which, as we had faced the west, we were not prepared for; yet the air was clear. November 25, 1851
I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set. Methinks the air is dusky soon after four these days. The landscape looks darker than at any season, — like arctic scenery. There is the sun a quarter of an hour high, shining on it through a perfectly clear sky, but to my eye it is singularly dark or dusky. And now the sun has disappeared, there is hardly less light for half a minute. I should not know when it was down, but by looking for it as I stand at this height. November 25, 1857
You are surprised, late these afternoons, a half an hour perhaps before sunset, . . . to see the singularly bright yellow light of the sun reflected from pines. . .through the clear, cold air, the wind, it may be, blowing strong from the northwest.. . . and when I look round northeast I am greatly surprised by the very brilliant sunlight of which I speak, surpassing the glare of any noontide, it seems to me. November 25, 1858
November 26, 2022
The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk. November 27, 1853
Now I begin to see, under the clouds in the west horizon, a clear crescent of yellowish sky, and suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape -- russet fields and hillsides, evergreens and rustling oaks and single leafless trees. In addition to the clearness of the air at this season, the light is all from one side, and, none being absorbed or dissipated in the heavens, but it being reflected both from the russet earth and the clouds, it is intensely bright, and all the limbs of a maple seen far eastward rising over a hill are wonderfully distinct and lit. I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year. November 29, 1853
Sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches . . . remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon. November 28, 1856
We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon. November 28, 1859
About 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described, lighting up the pitch pines and everything . . . When I got out of the wood. . .the softness of the sunlight on the russet landscape, the smooth russet grassy fields and meadows, was very soothing, the sun now getting low in a November day. November 29, 1852
Suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape — russet fields and hillsides, evergreens and rustling oaks and single leafless trees. In addition to the clearness of the air at this season, the light is all from one side, and . . . is intensely bright, and all the limbs of a maple seen far eastward rising over a hill are wonderfully distinct and lit. I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year. November 29, 1853
Already, a little after 4 o'clock, the sparkling windows and vanes of the village, seen under and against the faintly purple-tinged, slate-colored mountains, remind me of a village in a mountainous country at twilight, where early lights appear. I think that this peculiar sparkle without redness, a cold glitter, is peculiar to this season. November 30, 1852
Though there were some clouds in the west, there was a bright silver twilight before we reached our boat . . . A red house could hardly be distinguished at a distance, but a white one appeared to reflect light on the landscape. At first we saw no redness in the sky, but only some peculiar dark wisp-like clouds in the west, but on rising a hill I saw a few red stains like veins of red quartz on a ground of feldspar. The river was perfectly smooth except the upwelling of its tide, and as we paddled home westward, the dusky yellowing sky was all reflected in it, together with the dun-colored clouds and the trees, and there was more light in the water than in the sky.
November 14, 2020
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November Sunsets
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
