A Book of the Seasons: November 27 (short days, shore ice, shrub oak, acorns and pignuts, lycopodium and other wintergreen plants, barren earth, bright stars)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

 November 27

The bare barren earth

    cheerless without ice and snow  –   

but how bright the stars.

November 27, 1853

November 27, 2021

Almost an Indian-summer day.  November 27, 1852

On the 22d the ground was white with snow for a few hours only. Yet, though you saw no more of it generally the latter part of that day, I still see some of it in cold, wet, shaded places, as amid andromeda and cranberry vines. November 27, 1859

There is a little ice along most of the shore throughout the day. November 27, 1855

That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle . . . is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories. November 27, 1857

It reminds me . . . that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside. November 27, 1857

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. November 27, 1857

Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra.  November 27, 1857

The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut. November 27, 1857

I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall. November 27, 1852

I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak, except that the scales of the black stand out more loose and bristling about the fruit. So all scarlet oak acorns do not regularly taper to a point from a broad base. November 27, 1858

The shrub oaks and the sprouts make woods you can look down on. They are now our rustling gardens. November 27, 1852

This wood-lot, especially at the northwest base of the hill, is extensively carpeted with the Lycopodium complanatum and also much dendroideum. November 27, 1859

I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of .a fresh, shining green. November 27, 1853

Chimaphila umbellata. November 27, 1859  [pipsissewa, or “wintergreen.”] 

Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now November 27, 1853

To Colburn Farm wood-lot north of C. Hill. I traverse this wood-lot back and forth by the lines cut by those who have lotted it off. Thus I scare up the partridges in it . . . there are few wood-lots of this size which have not some in them at present. November 27, 1859

Take a turn down the river.  November 27, 1856 

The principal flight of geese is said to have been a few days before the 24th. I have seen none. November 27, 1859

There is little now to be heard along the river but the sedge rustling on the brink. November 27, 1855

A painted tortoise sinking to the bottom.  November 27, 1856 

And apparently tree sparrows along the shore. November 27, 1856 

Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it.  November 27, 1857

This country is so new that species of fishes and birds and quadrupeds inhabit it which science has not yet detected. November 27, 1858

The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk. November 27, 1853

It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers. November 27, 1853

Now a man will eat his heart, if ever, now while the earth is bare, barren and cheerless, and we have the coldness of winter without the variety of ice and snow – but methinks the variety and compensation are in the stars now. How bright they are now by contrast with the dark earth! November 27, 1853

*****

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

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

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory

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

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

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

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

November 27, 2021

April 19, 1856 (“I notice acorns sprouted.”)

April 29, 1852 ("The acorns among the leaves are sprouted, the shells open and the blushing (red) meat exposed at the sprout end, where the sprout is already turning toward the earth.”)

May 12, 1859 ("My red oak acorns have sent down long radicles underground.”) 

May 29, 1859 ("Coming out of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery today, where I had just been to deposit the corpse of a man, I pick up an oak tree three inches high with the acorn attached.")

September 12, 1854 ("[White oak acorns] are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them")

September 18, 1858 ("The small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately.") 

September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

October 7, 1860 ("I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. . . . Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted.”); 

October 17,1857 (“Glossy-brown white oak acorns strew the ground thickly, many of them sprouted. How soon they have sprouted!”);

October 16, 1859 ("All the Lycopodium complanatum I see to-day has shed its pollen.")

October 30, 1853 ("Coarse, rustling, light-colored withered grasses skirt the river and the wood-side.")
November 1, 1852 ("In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month.") 
November 1, 1855.("I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it is about a fortnight since I saw any. ")

November 2, 1853 ("The shrub oak cups which I notice to-day have lost their acorns.")

November 2, 1853 ("I have not seen a flock of small birds,. . . for about a fortnight. There is now no sound of early birds on the leafless trees and bushes -- willows and alders -- along this watercourse")

November 4, 1855 ("The river-brink — at a little distance at least — is now all sere and rustling.")

November 7, 1855 ("I see a painted tortoise swimming under water, and to my surprise another afterward out on a willow trunk”) 

November 7, 1855 ("Birds are pretty rare now. I hear a few tree sparrows in one place on the trees and bushes near the river, — a clear, chinking chirp and a half-strain...”)

November 9, 1855 ("See a painted tortoise and a wood tortoise in different places out on the bank still!”)

November 10, 1858 ("Hearing in the oak and near by a sound as if some one had broken a twig, I looked up and saw a jay pecking at an acorn. There were several jays busily gathering acorns on a scarlet oak")

November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.”)

November 11, 1855 ("The water is smooth. I see the reflections, not only of the wool-grass, but the. . . the coarse rustling sedge, now completely withered (and hear it pleasantly whispering)")

November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October.")

November 12, 1851 ("I hear no sound of any bird now at night, but sometimes some creature stirring, a rabbit, or skunk, or fox, betrayed now by the dry leaves which lie so thick and light")

November 13, 1857 ("How speedily the night comes on now!. . .in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended.")

November 14, 1857 ("I feel the crunching sound of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet")

November 14, 1858 ("This strong and cutting northwest wind makes the oak leaves rustle dryly enough to set your heart on edge.")

November 15, 1858 ("The Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum appears to be just in bloom in the swamp about the Hemlocks (the regular one (not variety) is apparently earlier)")
November 16, 1858 ("the lycopodium dendroideum, complanatum, and lucidulum, and the terminal shield fern are also very interesting.")

 November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”)

November 17, 1858 ("Lycopodium dendroideum . . .was apparently in its prime yesterday);

November 17, 1858 ("It would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season.")

November 18, 1857 ("I hear the dry rustling of seedy rattlesnake grass in the wind, a November sound, within a rod of me.")

November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”) 

November 20, 1857 (“The hardy tree sparrow has taken the place of the chipping and song sparrow, so much like the former that most do not know it is another. His faint lisping chip will keep our spirits up till another spring.”)

November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm.”)

November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find the river skimmed over in some places, and Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over, though commonly there is scarcely any ice to be observed along the shores.")

November 24, 1860 ("I am surprised to find a great many sound acorns still, though everyone is sprouted, . . . each with its radicle two inches long penetrated into the earth")

November 21, 1850 ("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 a place far away, yet actual and where I have been. It is like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future.”)

November 24, 1855 ("Geese went over on the 13th and 14th, on the 17th the first snow fell, and the 19th it began to be cold and blustering.”)

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. ")

November 25, 1852 ("At Walden. — I hear at sundown . . . a flock of wild geese going south.")

November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it?") 

November 25, 1859 ("There is a thin ice for half a rod in width along the shore, which shivers and breaks in the undulations of my boat.")
November 25, 1850 ("Ice on the water and winter in the air, but yet not a particle of snow on the ground")

November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")

November 25, 1858 ("Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground.")

November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it? Not only the fingers cease to do their office, but there is often a benumbing of the faculties generally. You can hardly screw up your courage to take a walk when all is thus tightly locked or frozen up and so little is to be seen in field or wood.”)
November 26, 1855 ("The ice next the shore bears me and my boat")

November 26, 1860 ("Better for us is 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.")

  

November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”)

 November 28, 1860 ("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") 

November 29, 1857 ("Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!”")

November 30, 1857 ("The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least”)

November 30, 1853 ("I am attracted nowadays by the various withered grasses and sedges, of different shades of straw-color and of various more or less graceful forms.")

December 1, 1856 (“I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to winter thoughts, and sunsets, and to all virtue.”)

I love the shrub oak,

its scanty garment of leaves

whispering to me.

December 1, 1856

December 1. 1856 ("The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch")

December 1, 1856 ("Well named shrub oak. Low, robust, hardy, indigenous. Well known to the striped squirrel and the partridge and rabbit. The squirrel nibbles its nuts sitting upon an old stump of its larger cousins.")

December 6, 1856 ("I take to the riverside where the ice will bear. White snow ice it is, but pretty smooth, but it is quite glare close to the shore and wherever the water overflowed yesterday.")

December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight. . . The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened.")
December 7, 1857 ("It is a fair, sunny, and warm day in the woods for the season. We eat our dinners . . .amid the young oaks in a sheltered and very unfrequented place. I cut some leafy shrub oaks and cast them down for a dry and springy seat.")

December 7, 1853 (" In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical, and also, in this grove, the variety obscurum of various forms, . . .like looking down on evergreen trees. And the L. lucidulum of the swamps, forming broad, thick patches of a clear liquid green,. . . not to mention the spreading openwork umbrellas of the L. complanatum, or flat club-moss, all with spikes still. Also the liquid wet glossy leaves of the Chimaphila (winter or snow-loving) umbellata, with its dry fruit.")

December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night")
December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”)

January 7, 1860 ("See, at White Pond . . . a pignut hickory, which was quite full of nuts and still has many on it.")

January 7, 1857 ("I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms.")

January 19, 1859 ("Gathered a scarlet oak acorn . . .with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has.")

November 27, 2021

If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

November 26 <<<<<<<<  November 27 >>>>>>>> November 28

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 27

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

What was that large rather grayish duck on Fair Haven Pond this afternoon?

March 26.

March 26, 2018

P. M. — To Conantum via Cardinal Shore and boat.

 The river has gone down considerably, but the rain of yesterday and to-day has checked its fall somewhat. 

Much earth has been washed away from the roots of grasses and weeds along the banks of the river, and many of those pretty little bodkin bulbs are exposed and so transported to new localities. This seems to be the way in which they are spread. 

I see many smallish ants on the red carcass of a musquash just skinned and lying on the bank, cold and wet as the weather is. They love this animal food. 

On the top of the hill at Lee's Cliff much wintergreen has been eaten; at least a great many leaves are lying loose, strewn about. 

I find washed up on the (Cardinal) shore a little bream about an inch and an eighth long, very much like those found at Walden last fall. It has about seven transverse bars, a similar dorsal fin, a reddish-copper iris, with the black vertical dash through the eye. I think it must be one of the common breams of the river, — though I see only the black spot on the operculum and not any red one, — and apparently all the young are thus striped (?) . 

What was that large rather grayish duck on Fair Haven Pond this afternoon? It was far off. Was it a last year's male sheldrake, or a female, or another?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 26, 1859

Much earth has been washed away from the roots of grasses and weeds along the banks of the river, and many of those pretty little bodkin bulbs are exposed and so transported to new localities. See April 22, 1856 ("What is that little bodkin-shaped bulb which I found washed up on the edge of the meadow, white with a few small greenish rounded leafets? "); April 16, 1858 ("The bodkin-like bulb, . . . is probably the water-purslane. I see it floating free and sending out many rootlets, on pools and ditches. In this way it spreads itself.")

On the top of the hill at Lee's Cliff much wintergreen has been eaten. See November 16, 1858 (“Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods.”); November 19, 1850 ("Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen the partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”); December 23, 1855 (“At Lee’s Cliff I notice these radical(?) leaves quite fresh: saxifrage, sorrel, polypody, . . . checkerberry, wintergreen, . . .”); February 16, 1855 (“I see where probably rabbits have nibbled of the leaves of the Wintergreen.”); see also July 3, 1852 ("The Chimaphila umbellata, wintergreen, must have been in blossom some time.”)

A little bream about an inch and an eighth long, very much like those found at Walden last fall.  See November 26, 1858 (" a great many minnows about one inch long . . . shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch. ... Yet, from their form and single dorsal fin, I think they are breams. Are they not a new species? "); November 27, 1858 ("They have about seven transverse dark bars, a vertical dark mark under eye, and a dark spot on edge of operculum. "); December 3, 1858 ("The largest of the four breams (vide November 26th) . . . Operculums tinged, streaked, and spotted with golden, coppery, greenish, and violet reflections. A vertical dark mark or line, corresponding to the stripes, through the eye. Iris copper-color or darker. ")

A cold and blustering afternoon. They want me to agree not to breathe castles.

November 16.

November 16, 2018

P. M. -— To Hubbard’s Close. 

A cold and blustering afternoon; sky for the most part overcast. 

The Cornus Canadensis is called by Loudon “a deciduous herbaceous plant,” the pyrolas “ever-green herbaceous plants.” The bunchberry leaves are now little if any withered, but generally drooping, the four hanging together as is the habit of the sericea and florida, the lambkill, etc. The plant dies down to its perennial spring. You can see its pink bud already strongly formed. But this year’s plant is very slow to die, and I suspect many of the leaves remain green all winter under the snow. They are now generally purplish-tinged. Let me observe in what respect the pyrolas are more evergreen. The new bud is formed between the present two leaves, the old leaves, lower on the stem or vine, being mostly decayed. 

There are many large limbs strewn about the woods, which were broken off by that strong southeast wind in peach time. These are now thickly leaved, the dead wood not being able to cast off the withered leaves; but the leaves having died thus prematurely are of a different color from that their companions changed to, — a peculiar yellow-brown (i. e. chestnuts and oaks) with more or less green in it.

I see a gray squirrel, eight or ten rods off in Hubbard’s large wood, scamper over the leaves and run up an oak. From the oak it crosses ascending into a tall white pine top, and there lies concealed, and I can see no more of him. 

The earth half covered with this slight snow, merely grayed with [it], is the more like the bare gray limbs of oak woods now, and such woods and the earth make the more uniform impression. 

Methinks the wintergreen, pipsissewa, is our handsomest evergreen, so liquid glossy green and dispersed almost all over the woods. The mountain laurel, the lycopodium dendroideum, complanatum, and lucidulum, and the terminal shield fern are also very interesting.

Preaching? Lecturing? Who are ye that ask for these things? What do ye want to hear, ye puling infants? A trumpet-sound that would train you up to mankind, or a nurse’s lullaby? The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state. It would be a relief to breathe one’s self occasionally among men. If there, were any magnanimity in us, any grandeur of soul, anything but sects and parties undertaking to patronize God and keep the mind within bounds, how often we might encourage and provoke one another by a free expression! I will not consent to walk with my mouth muzzled, not till I am rabid, until there is danger, that I shall bite the unoffending and that my bite will produce hydrophobia. 

Freedom of speech! It hath not entered into your hearts to conceive what those words mean. It is not leave given me by your sect to say this or that; it is when leave is given to your sect to withdraw. The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. I ask only that one fourth part of my honest thoughts be spoken aloud. 'What is it you tolerate, you church to-day? Not truth, but a lifelong hypocrisy. Let us have institutions framed not out of our rottenness, but out of our soundness. This factitious piety is like stale gingerbread. I would like to suggest what a pack of fools and cowards we mankind are. They want me to agree not to breathe castles. If I should draw a long breath in the neighborhood of these institutions, their weak and flabby sides would fall out, for my own inspiration would exhaust the air about them. The church! it is eminently the timid institution, and the heads and pillars of it are constitutionally and by principle the greatest cowards in the community. The voice that goes up from the monthly concerts is not so brave and so cheering as that which rises from the frogponds of the land. The best “preachers,” so called, are an effeminate class; their bravest thoughts wear petticoats. If they have any manhood they are sure to forsake the ministry, though they were to turn their attention to baseball. Look at your editors of popular magazines. I have dealt with two or three the most liberal of them. They are afraid to print a whole sentence, a round sentence, a free-spoken sentence. They want to get thirty thousand subscribers, and they will do anything to get them. They consult the D.D.’s and all the letters of the alphabet before printing a 'sentence.‘ I have been into many of these cowardly New England towns where they profess Christianity, — invited to speak, perchance, —where they were trembling in their shoes at the thought of the things you might say, as if they knew their weak side, — that they were weak on all sides. The devil they have covenanted with is a timid devil. If they would let their sores alone they might heal, and they could to the wars again like men; but in stead of that they get together in meeting-house cellars, rip off the bandages and poultice them with sermons.

One of our New England towns is scaled up hermetically like a molasses-hogshead,— such is its sweet Christianity, — only a little of the sweet trickling out at the cracks enough to daub you. The few more liberal-minded or indifferent inhabitants are the flies that buzz about it. It is Christianity bunged up. I see awful eyes looking out through a bull’s-eye at the bung-hole. It is doubtful if they can fellowship with me. 

The further you go up country, I think the worse it is, the more benighted they are. On the one side you will find a barroom which holds the “Scoffers,” so called, on the other a vestry where is a monthly concert of prayer. There is just as little to cheer you in one of these companies as the other. It may be often the truth and righteousness of the barroom that saves the town. There is nothing to redeem the bigotry and moral cowardice of New-Englanders in my eyes. You may find a cape which runs six miles into the sea that has not a man of moral courage upon it. What is called faith is an immense prejudice. Like the Hindoos and Russians and Sandwich-Islanders (that were), they are the creatures of an institution. They do not think; they adhere like oysters to what their fathers and grandfathers adhered to. How often is it that the shoemaker, by thinking over his last, can think as valuable a thought as he makes a valuable shoe? 

I have been into the town, being invited to speak to the inhabitants, not valuing, not having read even, the Assembly’s Catechism, and I try to stimulate them by reporting the best of my experience. I see the craven priest looking round for a hole to escape at, alarmed  because it was he that invited me thither, and an awful silence pervades the audience. They think they will never get me there again. But the seed has not all fallen in stony and shallow ground. 

The following are our shrubby evergreen plants (not including Coniferas): — 

• Mitchella repens 
• Linnaea 
• Andromeda Polifolia 
• Cassandra calyculata 
• Mayflower 
• Checkerberry 
• Mountain laurel 
• Lambkill 
• Kalmia glauca 
• Labrador tea 
• Common cranberry 
• European cranberry 

To which I will add the herbaceous:— 

• Chimaphila umbellata 
•                  maculata 

N. B. — Rubus hispidus leaves last through the winter, turning reddish.

It is no compliment to be invited to lecture before the rich Institutes and Lyceums. The settled lecturers are as tame as the settled ministers. The audiences do not want to hear any prophets; they do not wish to be stimulated and instructed, but entertained. They, their wives and daughters, go to the Lyceum to suck a sugarplum. The little of medicine they get is disguised with sugar. It is never the reformer they hear there, but a faint and timid echo of him only. They seek a pass time merely. Their greatest guns and sons of thunder are only wooden guns and great-grandsons of thunder, who give them smooth words well pronounced from manuscripts well punctuated, — they who have stolen the little fire they have from prophets whom the audience would quake to hear. They ask for orators that will entertain them and leave them where they found them. The most successful lecturing on Washington, or what-not, is an awful scratching of backs to the tune, it may be, of fifty thousand dollars. Sluggards that want to have a lullaby sung to them! Such manikins as I have described are they, alas, who have made the greatest stir (and what a shallow stir) in the church and Lyceum, and in Congress. They want a medicine that will not interfere with their daily meals. 

There is the Lowell Institute with its restrictions, requiring a certain faith in the lecturers. How can any free thinking man accept its terms? It is as if you were to resolve that you would not eat oysters that were not of a particular faith, — that, for instance, did not believe the Thirty-Nine Articles,— for the faith that is in an oyster is just as valuable as the faith referred to in Mr. Lowell’s will. These popular lecturers, our preachers, and magazines are for women and children in the bad sense. 

The curators have on their lists the names of the men who came before the Philomathean Institute in the next large town and did no harm; left things in statu quo, so that all slept the better for it; only confirmed the audience in their previous badness; spoke a good word for youngsters to be good boys. A man may have a good deal to say who has not any desk to thump on, who does not thunder in bad air. 

They want all of a man but his truth and independence and manhood. 

One who spoke to their condition would of course make them wince, and they would retaliate, i. e. kick him out, or stop their ears. 

The cold weather which began on the 12th, with the snow of the 13th and since, suddenly killed the few remaining living leaves, without any exceptions to speak of. Most foreign plants at once dropped their leaves, though pretty thick before, but there are many still on the privet. The sweet-fern in some places has still many green, more than any indigenous shrub or tree, though far the greater part of them (the sweet-ferns) are bare or withered. Probably the larch about fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 16, 1858

A cold and blustering afternoon; sky for the most part overcast. See November 13, 1851 (“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.”)

The eternity which I detect in Nature I predicate of myself also.

March 23

P. M. — To Walden. 

The sugar maple sap flows, and for aught I know is as early as the red. 

I think I may say that the snow has been not less than a foot deep on a level in open land until to-day, since January 6th, about eleven weeks. It probably begins to be less, about this date. The bare ground begins to appear where the snow is worn in the street. It has been steadily melting since March 13th, the thermometer rising daily to 40 and 45 at noon, but no rain. 

The east side of the Deep Cut is nearly bare, as is the railroad itself, and, on the driest parts of the sandy slope, I go looking for Cicindela, -- to see it run or fly amid the sere blackberry vines, -- some life which the warmth of the dry sand under the spring sun has called forth; but I see none. 

I am reassured and reminded that I am the heir of eternal inheritances which are inalienable, when I feel the warmth reflected from this sunny bank, and see the yellow sand and the reddish subsoil, and hear some dried leaves rustle and the trickling of melting snow in some sluiceway. 

The eternity which I detect in Nature I predicate of myself also. How many springs I have had this same experience! I am encouraged, for I recognize this steady persistency and recovery of Nature as a quality of myself.  

The first places which I observe to be bare now, though the snow is generally so deep still, are the steep hillsides facing the south, as the side of the Cut (though it looks not south exactly) and the slope of Heywood’s Peak toward the pond, also under some trees in a meadow (there is less snow there on account of eddy, and apparently the tree absorbs heat), or a ridge in the same place. 

Almost the whole of the steep hillside on the north of Walden is now bare and dry and warm, though fenced in with ice and snow. It has attracted partridges, four of which whir away on my approach.

There the early sedge is exposed, and, looking closer, I observe that it has been sheared off close down, when green, far and wide, and the fallen withered tops are little handfuls of hay by their sides, which have been covered by the snow and sometimes look as if they had served as nests for the mice, —for their green droppings are left in them abundantly, yet not such plain nests as in the grainfield last spring, — probably the Mus leucopus, — and the Wintergreen and the sere pennyroyal still retain some fragrance. 

As I return on the railroad, at the crossing beyond the shanty, hearing a rustling, I see a striped squirrel amid the sedge on the bare east bank, twenty feet distant. After observing me a few moments, as I stand perfectly still between the rails, he runs straight up to within three feet of me, out of curiosity; then, after a moment’s pause, and looking up to my face, turns back and finally crosses the railroad. All the red is on his rump and hind quarters. When running he carries his tail erect, as he scratched up the snowy bank. 

Now then the steep south hillsides begin to be bare, and the early sedge and sere, but still fragrant, penny royal and rustling leaves are exposed, and you see where the mice have sheared off the sedge and also made nests of its top during the winter. There, too, the partridges resort, and perhaps you hear the bark of a striped squirrel, and see him scratch toward his hole, rustling the leaves. 

For all the inhabitants of nature are attracted by this bare and dry spot, as well as you.

The muskrat-houses were certainly very few and small last summer, and the river has been remarkably low up to this time, while, the previous fall, they were very numerous and large, and in the succeeding winter the river rose remarkably high. So much for the muskrat sign. 

The bare ground just begins to appear in a few spots in the road in middle of the town.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1856

I am reassured and reminded that I am the heir of eternal inheritances which are inalienable, when I feel the warmth reflected from this sunny bank,. . . How many springs I have had this same experience! See March 15, 1852 ("This afternoon I throw off my outside coat. A mild spring day. The air is full of bluebirds. The ground almost entirely bare . . .I lean over a rail to hear what is in the air, liquid with the bluebirds' warble. My life partakes of infinity.")

Hear some dried leaves rustle and the trickling of melting snow. See February 21, 1855 ("When the leaves on the forest floor are dried, and begin to rustle under such a sun and wind as these, . . .I realize what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in Nature beginning to awake, that . . . another spring is approaching."); March 7, 1859 ("I walk, these first mild spring days, with my coat thrown open, stepping over tinkling rills of melting snow, excited by the sight of the bare ground"); March 18, 1858 ("The note of the first bluebird in the air answers to the purling rill of melted snow beneath."); March 16, 1858 ("The laws, perchance, by which the world was made, and according to which the systems revolve, are seen in full operation in a rill of melted snow")

The eternity which I detect in Nature I predicate of myself also . . . for I recognize this steady persistency and recovery of Nature as a quality of myself. See November 10, 1854 ("Nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet."); November 8, 1860 ("Consider how persevering Nature is, and how much time she has to work in, though she works slowly.")

The eternity

that I detect in Nature

I see in myself.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The eternity I detect in Nature 

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-18560323

A Book of the Seasons: October 14.

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

October 14

October 14, 2023

Merchants and banks are 

suspending and failing all 

the country over . . . 

 but not the sand-banks

  solid and warm and streaked 

with blackberry vines.

October 14, 1857 

Jays and chickadees

are oftener heard in the

fall than in summer. 

October 14, 1852 

Leaves of red maples

crimson-spotted on yellow

just like some apples.

October 14, 1856

In the still water

the blue of the sky deepens

in the reflection.

October 14, 1858

Paddling slowly back

the blue of the sky deepens 

in the reflection. 

October 14, 1858

With severe frosts

leaves fall before changing or

change and fall early.

October 14, 1860

We sit on the rock 

on Pine Hill overlooking 

Walden's blue water. 

October 14, 1859

Unusually

blue water contrasts with the

brilliant-tinted woods.

October 14, 1859

October 14, 2018

October 14, 2018

October 14, 2013

October 14, 2019

Fine, clear Indian-summer weather. October 14, 1853

A sudden change in the weather after remarkably warm and pleasant weather. October 14, 1856

We have had some fog the last two or three nights, and this forenoon it was slow to disperse, dog-day-like, but this afternoon it is warmer even than yesterday. October 14, 1857

Another, the tenth of these memorable days. October 14, 1857

These ten days are enough to make the reputation of any climate. A tradition of these days might be handed down to posterity. October 14, 1857

A fine Indian-summer day. October 14, 1859

I am glad to reach the shade of Hubbard’s Grove; the coolness is refreshing. October 14, 1857

Rained in the night, and finger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets. October 14, 1856

Down the railroad before sunrise. A freight-train in the Deep Cut. The sun rising over the woods. October 14, 1851

We sit on the rock on Pine Hill overlooking Walden. October 14, 1859

There is a thick haze almost entirely concealing the mountains. October 14, 1859

Paddling slowly back, we enjoy at length very perfect reflections in the still water. The blue of the sky, and indeed all tints, are deepened in the reflection.  October 14, 1858

There is wind enough to raise waves on the pond and make it bluer. October 14, 1859

The tints generally may be about at their height. October 14, 1859

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. October 14, 1856

There is a very thick haze this afternoon and almost a furnace-like heat. I cannot see far toward the sun through it. October 14, 1857



This, as other ponds now, when it is still, has a fine sparkle from skaters on it. October 14, 1857


Looking now toward the north side of the pond, I perceive that the reflection . . .reflection exhibits such an aspect of the hill, apparently, as you would get if your eye were placed at that part of the surface of the pond where the reflection seems to be. October 14, 1857

In this instance, too, then, Nature avoids repeating herself. October 14, 1857

The reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo. October 14, 1857

I doubt if you can ever get Nature to repeat herself exactly. October 14, 1857

On the causeway I pass by maples here and there which are bare and smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing; but there it lies, nearly as bright as ever, on one side on the ground, making nearly as regular a figure as lately on the tree. I should rather say that I first observed the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent colored and substantial shadow, and they alone suggested to look for the trees that had borne them. They preserve these bright colors on the ground but a short time, a day or so, especially if it rains. October 14, 1857

It is indeed a golden autumn. October 14, 1857

Winter may be anticipated. October 14, 1852

Let us see now if we have a cold winter. October 14, 1860

*****

October 14, 2020

We bushwhack up the mountain and over to the Moss Trail. It is a beautiful fall day 60° perhaps by mid afternoon. The witch hazel near the rock on the Moss Trail is bare of leaves and the sun shines on a multitude a little crinkly yellow flowers. Jane finds wintergreen plant and then one with berries. It tastes like wintergreen. We bushwhack back to our land. There is more deadfall near the ridge and we have to cut and remove branches hanging down My total impression is one of color and warmth.  October 14, 2020

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 © 2009-2019