1 November 1852 – 7 November 1852

A warm, mizzling kind of rain for two days past and still. Stedlarta media in Cheney’s gar- den, as last spring, butter-and-eggs, that small white aster (A. dumosus ?), the small white fleabane, hedge- mustard. Day before yesterday to the Cliffs in the rain, misty rain. As I approached their edge, I saw the woods be- neath, Fair Haven Pond, and the hills across the river, — which, owing to the mist, was as far as I could see, and seemed much further in consequence. I saw these be- tween the converging boughs of two white pines a rod or two from me on the edge of the rock; and I thought that there was no frame to a landscape equal to this, — to see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture. In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month. The birches have almost all lost their leaves. On the river this afternoon, the leaves, now crisp and curled, when the wind blows them on to the water become rude boats which float and sail about awhile conspicuously before they go to the bot- tom, — oaks, walnuts, etc. It is remarkable how native man proves himself to the earth, after all, and the completeness of his life in all its appurtenances. His alliances, how wide! He has domesticated not only beasts but fowl, not only hens and geese and ducks and turkeys, but his doves, wing- ing their way to their dovecots over street and village and field, enhance the picturesqueness of his sky, to say nothing of his trained falcons, his beautiful scouts in the upper air. He is lord of the fowl and the brute. His allies are not only on the land, but in the air and water. The dove, the martin, the bluebird, the swallow, and, in some countries, the hawk have attached them- selves to his fortunes. The doves that wing their way so near the clouds, they too are man’s retainers.

Tall buttercups, red clover, houstonias, Polygonum aviculare, still. Those handsome red buds on often red-barked twigs, with some red leaves still left, appear to be blueberry buds. The prinos berries also now attract me in the scarcity of leaves, its own all gone; its berries are ap- parently a brighter red for it. The month of chicka- dees and new-swollen buds. At long intervals I see or hear a robin still. To Walden. In the latter part of October the skaters and water- bugs entirely disappear from the surface of the pond, and then and in November, when the weather is per- fectly calm, it is almost absolutely as smooth as glass. This afternoon a three-days’ rain-storm is drawing to an end, though still overcast. The air is quite still but misty, from time to time mizzling, and the pond is very smooth, and its surface difficult to distinguish, though it no longer reflects the bright tints of autumn but som- bre colors only, —calm at the end of a storm, except here and there a slight glimmer or dimple, as if a few ° skaters which had escaped the frosts were still collected there, or a faint breeze there struck, or a few rain-drops fell there, or perchance the surface, being remarkably smooth, betrayed by circling dimples where a spring welled up from below. I paddled gently toward one of these places and was surprised to find myriads of small perch about five inches long sporting there, one after another rising to the surface and dimpling it, leaving bubbles on it. They were very handsome as they surrounded the boat, with their distinct trans- verse stripes, a rich brown color. There were many such schools in the pond, as it were improving the short season before the ice would close their window. When I approached them suddenly with noise, they made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails in fright, and then took refuge in the depths. Suddenly the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves rose, and still the perch leaped, but much higher, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface.’ The pond, dark before, was now a glorious and indescribable blue, mixed with dark, perhaps the opposite side of the wave, a sort of change- able or watered-silk blue, more cerulean if possible than the sky itself, which was now seen overhead. It required a certain division of the sight, however, to dis- cern this. Like the colors on a steel sword-blade.? Slate-colored snowbirds (? ) with a faint note. The leaves which are not withered, whose tints are still fresh and bright, are now remarked in sheltered places. Plucked quite a handsome nosegay from the side of Heywood’s Peak, — white and blue-stemmed goldenrods, asters (undulatus and ?). I do not know whether the perch amuse themselves thus more in the fall than at any other time. In such transparent and apparently bottomless water their swimming impresses the beholder as a kind of flight or hovering, like a compact flock of birds passing be- low one, just beneath his level on the right or left.? What a singular experience must be theirs in their win- ter quarters, their long night, expecting when the sun will open their shutters! If you look discerningly, so as to see the reflection only, you see a most glorious light blue, in comparison with which the original dark green of the opposite side of the waves is but muddy.’

Shepherd’s-purse abundant still in gardens. 3 p.m. — To Cliffs and Andromeda Ponds. In the Heywood Brooks, many young pollywogs two inches long and more; also snails on the bottom. I find these water-bugs, large and small, not on the surface, but apparently sheltered amid the weeds, going into winter quarters. While collecting caddis-worms, of which there are many, whose cases are made of little pieces of weeds piled about them like well-stones, I disturbed a good-sized fish, either a pout or a sucker, near the path. It swam rapidly down this shallow stream, cre- ating a wave which reached from side to side and betrayed it. I followed it down till it concealed itself under some frog-spittle, and when I had dislodged it thence, it went down further, till, coming to where the stream was dammed, it buried itself in the mud above the dam in an instant, and I could not dig it out. The landscape from Fair Haven Hill looks Novem- bery, bare gray limbs and twigs in the swamps; and where many young (or shrub) oaks have lost their leaves, you hear the rustling of oak and walnut leaves in the air. There is a ripple on the river from the cool northerly wind. The plants are sere. It is the month of withered oak leaves. The shrub oak plain is all with- ered. Only one or two butter-and-eggs left. At Andro- meda Pond, started nine black ( ?) ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me. The andromeda is a dull brown like the shrub oak leaves now. Or I was startled by the cracking of the ground in the coldest nights, which sounded as if it were my house that cracked, and in the morning I would find a crack in the earth a quarter of an inch wide and a quarter of a mile long.’ The sunsets begin to be interestingly warm.

Autumnal dandelion and yarrow. Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and senti- ment. 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 outdoors. I keep out of doors for the sake of the min- eral, vegetable, and animal in me. How precious a fine day early in the spring! — less so in the fall; less still in the summer and winter. Chimaphila* sheds its pollen now. Saw witch-hazels out of bloom, some still fresh. The winds of autumn draw a few strains from the telegraph, after all. At this post it is only a musical hum, but at the next it attains to clearness and re- minds me of the isles of Greece. I put my ear to the post. Every fibre resounded with the increasing infla- tus, but when it rose into a more melodious and tenser tone it seemed to retire and concentrate itself in the pith of the wood. There was also Thorer of Steige, in Magnus Bare- foot’s reign, who was “old and heavy.” He gained some victories, but when it went against him could not run. He told his foe, ‘I am well in hands, but ill on my feet.” He “was a man exceedingly stout, both high of stature and thick.’ So that, when he was hung, his neck gave way and his body fell to the ground. The poet sings: — ‘How the king’s thralls hung on the gallows Old Thorer and his traitor-fellows.” My thought is a part of the meaning of the world, and hence I use a part of the world as a symbol to express my thought.