in Thoreau’s Journal:

Much cold slate-colored cloud, bare twigs seen gleaming toward the light like gossamer, pure green off pines where old leaves have fallen, reddish or yellowish brown oak leaves rustling on the hillsides, 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. The fine grass killed by the frost, and bleached till it is almost silvery, has clothed the fields for a long time.

Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places. Some corn is left out still.

The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season.

In one light, these are old and worn-out fields that I ramble over, and men have gone to law about them long before I was born, but I trust that I ramble over them in a new fashion and redeem them.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I notice that many plants about this season of the year or earlier, after they have died down at top, put forth fresh and conspicuous radical leaves against another spring; so some human beings in the November of their days, exhibit some fresh radical greenness, which, through the frosts may soon nip it, indicates and confirms their essential greenness. When their summer leaves have faded and fallen, they put forth fresh radical leaves which sustain the life in their root still, against a new spring. The dry fields have, for a long time, been spotted with the small radical leaves of the fragrant life-everlasting, not to mention the large primrose, John’s-wort, etc.

Almost every plant, although it may show no greenness above the ground, if you dig about it, will be found to have fresh shoots already pointing upward, and ready to burst forth in the spring.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There seems to be in the fall a sort of attempt at spring, a rejuvenescence, as if the winter were not expected by a part of nature. Violets, dandelions, and some other flowers blossom again, and mulleins and innumerable other plants begin again to spring, and are only checked by the increasing cold. There is a slight uncertainty whether there will be any winter this year.

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, it never jests, it is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and rely on the earth….

My journal should be record of my love.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

A very fine snow falling, just enough to whiten the bare spots a little.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is very cold and windy; thermometer 26….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…

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.

November 14, 2017

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is wonderful what gradation and harmony there is in nature. The light reflected from bare twigs at this season, that is, since they began to be bare, in the latter part of October, is not unlike that from gossamer, and like that which will erelong be reflected from the ice that will incrust them. So the bleached herbage of the fields is like frost, and the frost like snow, and one prepares for the other.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is much the coldest day yet, and the ground is a little frozen and resounds under my tread. All people move the brisker for the cold, yet are braced and a little elated by it.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

That delicate, waving, feathery dry grass which I saw yesterday is to be remembered with the autumn.

The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as at another.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

All the light of November may be called an afterglow.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

I see catnep turned at top to a crimson purple.

This is a peculiar season, peculiar for its stillness. The crickets have ceased their song. The few birds are well-nigh silent. The tinted and gay leaves are now sere and dead, and the woods wear a sombre aspect.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Climbed the wooded hill by Holden’s spruce swamp, and got a novel view of the river and Fair Haven Bay through the almost leafless woods. How much handsomer a river or lake such as ours seen thus through a foreground of scattered or else partially leafless trees, through at a considerable distance this side of it, especially if the water is open, without a wooded shore or isles. It is the most perfect and beautiful of frames, which yet the sketcher is commonly carefully to brush aside. I mean a pretty thick foreground, a view of the distant water through the near forest, through a thousand little vistas, as we are rushing towards the former, that intimate mingling of wood and water which excites an expectation the the near and open view rarely realizes. We prefer that some part be concealed which our imagination may navigate.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I make it my business to extract from Nature whatever nutriment she can furnish me, though at the risk of endless iteration. I milk the sky and the earth…Our woods and fields are the perfection of parks and groves, and gardens and grottoes, and arbors, and paths and parterres, and vistas and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have. They are the common which each village possesses, the true paradise, in comparison with which all elaborately and willfully wealth-constructed parks and gardens are paltry imitations.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The mere greenness, which was not remarkable in the summer, is positively interesting now. My thoughts are with the polypody a long time after my body has passed….The bare outline of the polypody thrills me strangely.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Now you easily can detect where larches grow….They are far more distinct than at any other season….Unlike the pines there is no green left to alternate with their yellow, but they are a uniform yellow….

These trees now cannot easily be mistaken for any other, because they are the only conspicuously yellow trees now left in the woods….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

These are my China asters, my late garden flowers.

It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.