I am a rock.

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

 ~Zphx

If I feel no softening toward the rocks, what do they signify? January 23, 1858

I see a lichen 

on a rock in a meadow, 

a perfect circle. 

November 15, 1850

I see my shadow 

 as a second person who 

sits down on this rock. 

June 11, 1851

Lichen-covered rock 

naked in the moonlight and 

warm as in summer. 

January 1, 1852

Indian summer day. 

Chickadees take heart and sing 

above these warm rocks. 

October 13, 1852

I sit on this rock 

surprised one more time by the 

beauty of the world. 

May 17, 1853

May 22, 1854 

October 7, 1857 

I pause in the sun 

as I climb the Cliff and sit 

dreaming on a rock. 

January 9, 1853 

Beyond the brook 

I sit awhile on a rock 

below the old trough. 

April 21, 1854

I sit on a rock 

wrestling with the melody 

that possesses me. 

May 23, 1854

On this rock notice 

the seeds of berries in the 

droppings of some bird. 

August 2, 1854 

A cold and strong wind, 

yet very warm in the sun, 

a fly on this rock. 

March 4, 1855 

I sit on a rock 

and wait for my pail to fill. 

I hear the sap drop. 

April 9, 1856 

These rocks and trees are 

personalities to me. 

I reverence the stones. 

August 30, 1856

I see Wachusett 

from this rounded rock covered 

with fresh pine-needles. 

October 19, 1856 

The stones are happy 

Concord River is happy, 

I am happy too. 

January 6, 1857

I am that rock by

the pond-side affected by

each natural sound. 

February 20, 1857* 

A brother poet, 

one with the rocks and with me, 

whose muse inspires mine. 

May 12, 1857 

Perhaps I could write 

meditations under a 

rock in a shower. 

May 30, 1857

Sitting on this rock, 

we hear the first wood frog’s croak 

and begin to dream. 

March 23, 1859

 

On a dry rock in

a sunny place in the woods 

blueberry leafing. 

April 25, 1859 

We sit on the rock 

on Pine Hill overlooking 

Walden's blue water. 

October 14, 1859

If I were to discover
that a certain kind of stone
by the pond-shore was affected,
say partially disintegrated,
by a particular natural sound,
as of a bird or insect,
I see that one
could not be completely described
without describing the other.

I am that rock by the pond-side.
February 20, 1857

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, I am a rock

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

There is a harmony between this stony fruit and these hard, tough limbs which bear it.

November 19. 

P. M. — Mocker-nutting, to Conantum. 

The lambkill and water andromeda are turned quite dark red where much exposed; in shelter are green yet. 

Those long mocker-nuts appear not to have got well ripe this year. They do not shed their husks, and the meat is mostly skinny and soft and flabby. Perhaps the season has been too cold. 

I shook the trees. It is just the time to get them. How hard they rattle down, like stones! There is a harmony between this stony fruit and these hard, tough limbs which bear it. 

I was surprised to see how much the hickory-tops had been bent and split, apparently by ice, tough as they are. They seem to have suffered more than evergreens do. 

The husks of one tree scarcely gaped open at all, and could not be removed. 

I did not think at first why these nuts had not been gathered, but I suspect it may be because Puffer, who probably used to get them, has committed suicide.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 19, 1858

I shook the trees. It is just the time to get them. See November 18, 1858 ("Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts.") November 7, 1853 (“I shook two mocker-nut trees; one just ready to drop its nuts, and most came out of the shells. But the other tree was not ready; only a part fell, and those mostly in the shells.”)

Puffer has committed suicide. See May 17, 1858 (“While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered.”) See also  November 8, 1858 ("He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury. A boy slept in the chamber with him, and, hearing a noise, got and found __ on the floor with both his jugular veins cut.")

Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over during the last four days.

November 18. 

November 18, 2018

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway. They are prominent now, first, because they are bare; second, because high-colored always and this rarity of bright colors at present; third, because of the clear air and November light. 

For the same reason I notice nowadays the red twigs of the silky cornel by the river. The black willow twigs are tawny in the mass, almost cinnamon. 

The fruitless enterprise of some persons who rush helter-skelter, carrying out their crazy scheme,—merely “putting it through,” as they phrase it, — reminds me of those thistle-downs which, not being detained nor steadied by any seed at the base, are blown away at the first impulse and go rolling over all obstacles. They may indeed go fastest and farthest, but where they rest at last not even a thistle springs. I meet these useless barren thistle-downs driving over the fields. They remind me of busy merchants and brokers on ’change doing business on credit, gambling with fancy stocks, that have failed over and over again, assisted to get a-going again to no purpose,—-a great ado about no thing, — all in my eye, — with nothing to deposit, not of the slightest use to the great thistle tribe, not even tempting a jackass. When you right or extricate one of these fellows and set him before the wind again, it is worth the while to look and see if he has any seed of success under him. Such a one you may know afar — he floats more slowly and steadily— and of his enterprise expect results. 

Am surprised to see Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over during the last four days. It will probably open again. Thus, while all the channel elsewhere is open and a mere edging of ice amid the weeds is seen, this great expansion is completely bridged over, thus early. 

Some mocker-nuts, and I think some hickories, on Conantum are not yet bare. Their withered leaves hold on almost like the oaks. Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts. 

I go along under the east side of Lee’s Cliff, looking at the evergreen ferns. The marginal fern is the commonest. How pretty the smallest asplenium sometimes, in a recess under a shelving rock, as it were pinned on rosettewise, as if it were the head of a breastpin. 

I look south from the Cliff. The westering sun just out of sight behind the hill. Its rays from those bare twigs across the pond are bread and cheese to me. So many oak leaves have fallen that the white birch stems are more distinct amid the young oaks; I see to the bone. See those brave birches prepared to stand the Winter through on the hillsides. They never sing, “What’s this dull town to me?” 

The maples skirting the meadows (in dense phalanxes) look like light infantry advanced for a swamp fight. Ah, dear November, ye must be sacred to the Nine surely.

The early willow catkins already peep out a quarter of an inch. 

Early crowfoot is reddened at Lee’s.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 18, 1858

Notice the short bright-yellow willow twigs on Hubbard’s Causeway. Compare November 18, 1855 (“I do not detect any peculiar brightness whatever in the osiers on the Hubbard causeway; they are scarcely, if at all, brighter than the tops of the trees.”)

Am surprised to see Fair Haven Pond completely frozen over.  See November 21, 1852 ("I am surprised this afternoon to find . . . Fair Haven Pond one-third frozen or skimmed over, though commonly there is scarcely any ice to be observed along the shores."); November 23, 1852 (“I am surprised to see Fair Haven entirely skimmed over.”) December 5, 1853 (" Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over."); December 7, 1856 (" Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”)

Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts. See November 7, 1853 (“I shook two mocker-nut trees; one just ready to drop its nuts, and most came out of the shells. But the other tree was not ready; only a part fell, and those mostly in the shells.”); November 19, 1858 ("I shook the trees. It is just the time to get them")

How pretty the smallest asplenium sometimes, in a recess under a shelving rock, as it were pinned on rosettewise, as if it were the head of a breastpin. See August 30, 1853 ("The dwarf spleenwort [maidenhair spleenwort] grows in the sharp angles of the rocks in the side of Lee's Cliff, its small fronds spreading in curved rays . . . The ebony spleenwort stands upright against the rocks.")

The early willow catkins already peep out a quarter of an inch. See February 19, 1857 (“Some willow catkins have crept a quarter of an inch from under their scales and look very red, probably on account of the warm weather.”); March 10, 1855 (“I am not aware of growth in any plant yet, unless it be the further peeping out of willow catkins. They have crept out further from under their scales, and, looking closely into them, I detect a little redness along the twigs even now”): March 20, 1858 (“How handsome the willow catkins! Those wonderfully bright silvery buttons, so regularly disposed in oval schools in the air, or, if you please, along the seams which their twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver, just peeping from beneath the black scales, to lusty pussies which have thrown off their scaly coats and show some redness at base on a close inspection.”)

The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

November 17

November 17, 2015

November 17, 2018

The ground has remained frozen since the morning of the 12th. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The polypody on the rock is much shrivelled by the late cold. The edges are curled up, and it is not nearly so fair as it was ten days ago. 

I see a small botrychium in the swampy wood west of river, opposite Emerson’s field, quite fresh, not at all injured. 

The musquash are more active since the cold weather. I see more of them about the river now, swimming back and forth across the river, and diving in the middle, where I lose them. They dive off the round-backed, black mossy stones, which, when small and slightly exposed, look much like themselves. In swimming show commonly three parts with water between. One sitting in the sun, as if for warmth, on the opposite shore to me looks quite reddish brown. They avail themselves of the edge of the ice now found along the sides of the river to feed on. 

Much Lycopodium complanatum did not shed pollen on the 3d, and the Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum sheds it only within a very few days  (was apparently in its prime yesterday). So 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. It was coincident with this prominence. 

Leaving my boat, I walk through the low wood west of Dove Rock, toward the scarlet oak. The very sunlight on the pale-brown bleached fields is an interesting object these cold days. I naturally look toward [it] as to a wood-fire. 

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. I see one thing when it is cold and another when it is warm. 

Looking toward the sun now when an hour high, there being many small alders and birches between me and it for half a dozen rods, the light reflected from their with closely concentric lines, of which I see about one fourth, on account of the upward curve of the twigs on each side, and the light not being reflected to me at all from one side of the trees directly in front of me. The light is thus very pleasantly diffused. 

We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. 

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner which would not be believed if described. It was quite like the sunlight reflected from grass and weeds covered with hoar frost. Yet in an ordinary light these are but dark or dusky looking twigs with scarcely a noticeable downiness. Yet as I saw it, there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. 

A myriad of surfaces are now prepared to reflect the light. This is one of the hundred silvery lights of November. The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. 

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up from the weeds within a stone’s throw of my boat’s place. It drops its excrement from thirty feet in the air, and this falling, one part being heavier than another, takes the form of a snake, and suggests that this may be the origin of some of the stories of this bird swallowing a snake or eel which passed through it.

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. 

Winter is not all white and sere. Some trees are evergreen to cheer us, and on the forest floor our eyes do not fall on sere brown leaves alone, but some evergreen shrubs are placed there to relieve the eye. Mountain laurel, lambkill, checkerberry, Wintergreen, etc., etc., etc., and a few evergreen ferns scattered about keep up the semblance of summer still. 

Aspidium spinulosum

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody (though shrivelled by cold where exposed). 
• Asplenium trichomanes. 
• A. ebeneum.  
• Aspidium spinulosum (?). large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th. 
• A. cristatum (?), Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond. 
• A. marginale (common). 
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield).

The first one and the last two are particularly handsome, the last especially, it has so thick a frond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 17, 1853 

The polypody on the rock. See November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock. ") See alss A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

Not only different objects are presented to our attention at different seasons of the year, but we are in a frame of body and of mind to appreciate different objects at different seasons. See June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”); May 23, 1853 ( Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind.”;  October 26, 1857 (“The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike.”); November 3, 1853 ("There are very few phenomena which can be described indifferently as occurring at different seasons of the year, for they will occur with some essential difference.”); May 6, 1854 ("I can be said to note the flower's fall only when I see in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience this, then the flower appears to me.”);   June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. . . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”); August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood”);April 24, 1859  (" There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season....The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's.”); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. See November 13, 1858 ("Now for twinkling light reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in the early twilight”)

The hundred silvery lights of November. See November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”) See also October 25, 1858 (“Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.”); November 2, 1853( "We come home in the autumn twilight . . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”);  November 10, 1858 (""This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces . . . A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one;); November 11, 1851 (" Every withered blade of grass and every dry weed, as well as pine-needle, reflects light. . . . the sun shines in upon the stems of trees which it has not shone on since spring.): November 11, 1853 ("Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields.”); .November 14, 1853("The clear, white, leafless twilight of November"); November 15, 1859 ("I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light"); November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights”)

Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern .there was a perfect halo of light resting on the knoll as I moved to right or left. See December 7, 1857 (“I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s.”)

I am surprised to see a stake-driver fly up. See September 20, 1855("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises. “); and note to April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")

Nature is moderate and loves degrees. See June 14, 1851 ("How moderate, deliberate, is Nature!"); January 26, 1858 ("Nature loves gradation.")

As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody  [Polypodium virginianum — rock polypody] (though shrivelled by cold where exposed)
• Asplenium trichomanes [maidenhair spleenwort].
• A. ebeneum [or Asplenium platyneuron – ebony spleenwort or brownstem spleenwort].
• Aspidium spinulosum (?) [or Dryopteris carthusiana or Polypodium spinulosum, –  spinulose shield fern, spinulose woodfern or toothed wood fern] large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th.
• A. cristatum (?) [or Dryopteris cristata – crested wood fern], Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond.
• A. marginale (common) [or Dryopteris marginalis, – marginal shield fern or marginal wood fern]
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield)[or Polystichum acrostichoides, – Christmas fern]

See September 30, 1859 ("Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."). See also August 30, 1853  ('I find at this time in fruit: (1) Polypodium vulgare,

. . .( 5 ) Asplenium Trichomanes ( dwarf spleenwort), also ( 6 ) A. ebeneum ( ebony spleenwort ),. . .(8) Dryopteris marginalis  marginal shield fern), (9) Polystichum acrostichoides (terminal shield fern). . . Nos . 1, 5 , 6 , and 8 common at Lee's Cliff . No.. . . 9 at Brister's Hill.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum; A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort

The last especially[ handsome], it has so thick a frond. See July 29, 1853 ("Brister's Hill. There are some beautiful glossy, firm ferns there, – Polytichum acrostichoides (?), shield fern. Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line.")

Note: Did HDT observe Dryopteris intermedia? Although intermediate woodfern (Dryopteris intermedia) a/k/a "evergreen woodfern" is a common evergreen fern, Henry's only reference to “intermediate fern" is likely a mistranscription of "interrupted fern" (Osmunda claytoniana. The Botanical Index to Thoreau's Journal. See May 13, 1860 (“The intermediate ferns and cinnamon, a foot and a half high, have just leafeted out.”) Compare May 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon and interrupted ferns are both about two feet high in some places."); May 23, 1860 (" Interrupted fern fruit probably a day or two, and cinnamon, say the same or just after."); May 26, 1855 ("Interrupted fern pollen the 23d; may have been a day or two. Cinnamon fern to-day.")

November 17.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, November 17

November 17, 2015

The manifold ways

at this season that light is 

reflected to us.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us

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-531117

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

Walden, \\"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” )

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.”)

Church, state and school – all

mankind want me to agree 

not to breathe castles.  

Buds and twigs and the mazes made by twigs in the silvery November light

November 15. 

P. M. — To Grackle Swamp. A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. 

November 15, 2023

I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up. The end of last month and the first part of this is the time. I do not know that I find more than one kind now in that swamp, and of that the fertile fronds are mostly decayed. All lie flat, ready to be buried in snow. 

Slight as the snow is, you are now reminded occasionally in your walks that you have contemporaries, and perchance predecessors. I see the track of a fox which was returning from his visit to a farmyard last night, and, in the wood-path, of a man and a dog. The dog must have been a large one. I see their shadows before me. 

In another place, where the snow is so slight and lifted up on the withered grass that no track is left, I see by the cakes or balls of snow that have dropped from his shoes that a man has passed. This would be known for a man and a dog’s track in any part of the world. 

Five toes in a bundle, somewhat diamond-shape, forming a sort of rosette, are the print of the dog, whether on the sands of Africa or the snow of New England. The track of his master is somewhat more variable, yet reducible within certain limits. 

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), — later than the Lycopodium complanatum, which is done there. 

Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November; also the frost-weed and evergreen ferns. Buds and twigs (like gossamer), and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down and the silver-haired andropogon grass to the first half of November. 

The water andromeda leaves have fallen, and the persistent turned that red brown; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1858

To Grackle Swamp. See March 19, 1858 ("Met Channing and walked on with him to what we will call Grackle Swamp")

A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little. See November 12, 1859 ("The first sprinkling of snow, which for a short time whitens the ground in spots.”); and  note to November 15, 1854 ("The first snow, a mere sugaring which went off the next morning.")

I go to look for evergreen ferns before they are covered up. The end of last month and the first part of this is the time.  See October 31, 1851 (" I see two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, apparently the Aspidium spinulosum (?) and cristatum (?).. . .They are quite fresh in those cold and wet places and almost flattened down now . . .Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves ");   November 16, 1853 ("I now take notice of the green polypody on the rock and various other ferns, one the marginal (?) shield fern and one the terminal shield fern.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part One: Maidenhair and Ebony Spleenwort; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Three: Polypody, Marginal Shield Fern, Terminal Shield Fern

I see the track of a fox which was returning from his visit to a farmyard last night, See December 14, 1855("Then I came upon a fox-track made last night, leading toward a farmhouse"); January 21, 1857 ("It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village, where they have been in the night, and yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in eight or ten years.")

This would be known for a man and a dog’s track in any part of the world. See November 28, 1858 ("Here is the track of a sportsman and his dog in my secluded path, and probably he preceded me in the summer as well. Yet my hour is not his, and I may never meet him! ")

The Lycopodium denroideum var. obscurum appears to be just in bloom in the swamp about the Hemlocks (the regular one (not variety) is apparently earlier).  See September 24, 1857 ("I find the Lycopodium dendroideum, not quite out, just northwest of this pine grove, in the grass. It is not the
variety obscurum, which grows at Trillium Wood, is more upright-branched and branches round."); Novemberr 7, 1858 ("I see Lycopodium dendroideum which has not yet shed pollen.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November. See November 15, 1859 (“A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it.”);  See also  November 11, 1858 ("Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October)."),  note to November 3, 1857 ("It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear.") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Buds and twigs (like gossamer), and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down. See November 28, 1856 ("The sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches, very dense and ascendant with a marked parallelism, they remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon")

The water andromeda leaves have fallen, and the persistent turned that red brown. See November 14, 1858 ("The different colors of the water andromeda in different lights."); November 20, 1857 ("The water andromeda leaves are brown now, except where protected by trees."); November 23, 1857 ("The water andromeda [at Gowing's Swamp] makes a still more uniformly dense thicket, which. . .makes an impression of smoothness and denseness, – its rich brown, wholesome surface, even as grass or moss.")

November 15.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  November 15

A very fine snow, 

just enough to whiten the 

bare spots a little. 

I go to look for 

the evergreen ferns before 

they are covered up. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Buds and twigs and the mazes made by twigs

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581115

If he looks into the water, he gets no comfort there, for that is cold and empty, expecting ice.

November 14. 

It is very cold and windy; thermometer 26. I walk to Walden and Andromeda Ponds. 

It is all at once perfect winter. I walk on frozen ground two thirds covered with a sugaring of dry snow, and this strong and cutting northwest wind makes the oak leaves rustle dryly enough to set your heart on edge. A great many have fallen, even since the snow last evening. 

Take a citizen out into an oak sprout-land when there is a sugaring of dry snow and a cold, cutting northwest wind rustles the leaves. A sympathetic shiver will seize him. He will know of no fire to warm his wits by. He has no pleasing pursuit to follow through these difficulties, no traps to inspect, no chopping to do. Every resounding step on the frozen earth is a vain knocking at the door of what was lately genial Nature, his bountiful mother, now turned a stepmother. He is left outside to starve. The rustling leaves sound like the fierce breathing of wolves, — an endless pack, half famished, from the north, impelled by hunger to seize him. 

Of birds only the chickadees seem really at home. Where they are is a hearth and a bright fire constantly burning. The tree sparrows must be very lively to keep warm. The rest keep close to-day. 

You will see where a mouse (or mole?) has run under the thinnest snow, like this. Such humble paths they prefer, perhaps to escape nocturnal foes. 

Now I begin to notice the silver downy twigs of the sweet-fern in the sun (lately bare), the red or crimson twigs and buds of the high blueberry. The different colors of the water andromeda in different lights.

If he looks into the water, he gets no comfort there, for that is cold and empty, expecting ice. 

Now, while the frosty air begins to nip your fingers and your nose, the frozen ground rapidly wears away the soles of your shoes, as sandpaper might; the old she wolf is nibbling at your very extremities. The frozen ground eating away the soles of your shoes is only typical of the vulture that gnaws your heart this month. 

Now all that moves migrates, or has migrated. Ducks are gone by. The citizen has sought the town. 

Probably the witch-hazel and many other flowers lingered till the 11th, when it was colder. The last leaves and flowers (?) may be said to fall about the middle of November.

Snow and cold drive the doves to your door, and so your thoughts make new alliances.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1858

It is all at once perfect winter. I walk on frozen ground two thirds covered with a sugaring of dry snow. See November 14, 1857 ("I feel the crunching sound of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet,. . .Such is the first freezing day.")

This strong and cutting northwest wind makes the oak leaves rustle dryly enough to set your heart on edge. See 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"); November 25, 1857 (“November Eatheart, — is that the name of it? ")

Now I begin to notice the silver downy twigs of the sweet-fern in the sun (lately bare). See November 17, 1858 ("Ascending a little knoll covered with sweet-fern, shortly after, the sun appearing but a point above the sweet-fern, its light was reflected from a dense mass of the bare downy twigs of this plant in a surprising manner"); December 7, 1857 ("I would rather sit at this table with the sweet-fern twigs between me and the sun than at the king’s."); January 14, 1860 ("Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves.")

If he looks into the water, he gets no comfort there, for that is cold and empty, expecting ice. See November 11, 1858 ("The waters look cold and empty of fish and most other inhabitants now. Here, in the sun in the shelter of the wood, the smooth shallow water, with the stubble standing in it, is waiting for ice. Indeed, ice that formed last night must have recently melted in it. The sight of such water now reminds me of ice as much as of winter quarters.”)

Probably the witch-hazel and many other flowers lingered till the 11th. See November 15, 1853 ("Take up a witch-hazel with still some fresh blossoms. "); November 24, 1859 ("At Spanish Brook Path, the witch-hazel (one flower) lingers")