in Thoreau’s Journal:
in Thoreau’s Journal:
Each phase of nature, while not invisible, is yet not too distinct and obtrusive. It is there, to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention. It is like a silent but sympathizing companion, in whose company we retain most of the advantages of solitude, with whom we can walk and talk, or be silent, naturally, without the necessity of talking in a strain foreign to the place.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
I find it good to be out in this still, dark, mizzling afternoon. My walk or voyage is more suggestive and profitable than in bright weather. The view is contracted by misty rain. The water is perfectly smooth, and the stillness is favorable to reflection. I am more open to impressions, more sensitive, not calloused or indurated by sun and wind, as if in a chamber still. My thoughts are concentrated. I am all compact. The solitude is real too, for this weather keeps other men at home. This mist is like a roof and walls over and around, and I walk with a domestic feeling.
The sound of a wagon going over an unseen bridge is louder than ever, and so of other sounds. I am compelled to look at near objects. All things have a soothing effect The very clouds and mists brood over me. My power of observation and contemplation is much increased. My attention does not wander. The world and my life are simplified. What now are Europe and Asia?
in Thoreau’s Journal:
Climbed the wooded hill by Holden’s spruce swamp —& got a novel View of the river & 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 though at a considerable distance this side of it—especially if the water is open without wooded shores or isles— It is the most perfect & beautiful of all frames which yet the sketcher is commonly careful 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 toward the former—that intimate mingling of wood & water which excites an expectation which the near & open view rarely realizes. We prefer that some part be concealed—which our imagination may navigate.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
Do you imagine its fruit to stick to the back of the leaf all winter? At this season polypody is in the air….
in Thoreau’s Journal:
Autumnal dandelion and yarrow.
Must be out of doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life, this life in the present. Let a man have thought what he will of Nature in the house, she will still be novel out-doors….
My thought is part of the meaning of the world, and hence I use a part of the world as a symbol to express my thought.
November 1, 2016 Photos
in Thoreau’s Journal:
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. No other creature effects such changes in nature as man.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections.
in Thoreau’s Journal
It is not true–as I noticed today, that squirrels never gnaw an imperfect & worthless nut–
in Thoreau’s Journal:
It is a beautiful, warm, and calm Indian-summer afternoon….the water so smooth and glassy….
The coarse withered grass, and the willows and button-bushes with their myriad balls, and whatever else stands on the brink is reflected with wonderful distinctness….
in Thoreau’s Journal:
What with the rains & frosts & winds the leaves have fairly fallen now— You may say the fall has ended. Those which still hang on the trees are withered & dry….the autumnal tints are gone….the woods have for the most part acquired their winter aspect— And coarse rustling light colored withered grasses skirt the river & the woodside—
This is November— The landscape prepared for winter without snow—
in Thoreau’s Journal:
Some afternoons when the lower strata of the atmosphere is filled with a haze like mist the hills in the horizon seem from an eminence are visibly divided into distinct ranges
—& it is easy to refer each to its own chain to tops of the chain rising above the mists which fill the vallies.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June 1st to October 1st, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn. October the month of ripe or painted leaves; November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
The colors of the fields make haste to harmonize with the snowy mantle which is soon to invest them and with the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. When I meet with any such in my Journal, it affects me as poetry, and I appreciate that other season and that particular phenomenon more than at the time. The world so seen is all one spring, and full of beauty. You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day’s experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. Only the rarest flower, the purest melody, of the season thus comes down to us.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
The autumnal tints grow gradually darker and duller, but not less rich to my eye. And now a hillside near the river exhibits the darkest crispy reds and browns of every hue, all agreeably blended. At the foot, next the meadow, stands a front rank of smoke-like maples, bare of leaves, intermixed with yellow birches. Higher up are red oaks, of various shades of dull red, with yellowish, perhaps black oaks, intermixed, and walnuts now brown, and near the hill-top or rising above the rest, a still yellow oak, and here and there amid the rest or in the foreground on the meadow, dull, ashy, salmon-colored white oaks, large and small, all these contrasting with the clear, liquid sempiternal green of pines. The sheen on the water blinds my eyes. Mint is still green and wonderfully recreating to smell. I had put such things behind me. It is hard to remember lilies now.
October 24, 2016 Photo
in Thoreau’s Journal:
A northeast storm, though not much rain falls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle. This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2:30 P.M. I see two flocks go over, faintly honking. A great many must go over today, and also alight in this neighborhood. This weather warns them of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way.
The brilliant autumnal colors are red and yellow, and the various tints and shades of these. Blue is reserved to be the color of the sky, but yellow and red are colors of the earth-flower. Every fruit on ripening, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. Color stands for all ripeness and success. The noblest feature, the eye, is the fairest-colored, the jewel of the body.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
October has been the month of autumnal tints. The first of the month, the tints began to be more general, at which time the frosts began. There were scattered bright tints long before, but not till then did the forest begin to be painted.
By the end of the month, the leaves will either have fallen, or be seared and turned brown by the frosts, for the most part.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.
in Thoreau’s Journal:
Now again as in the spring
we begin to look for sheltered and sunny places where we may sit.
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