21 November 1853 – 27 November 1853

Monday. A fine misty rain all night and to-day. Raking so many cranberries has made me quite con- versant with the materials of the river wreck. There are many middle-sized living black dor-bugs in it, as well as bugle-horn shells, as I find on washing out my cranberries in the kitchen to-day. I have got about two and a half bushels of clear cranberries, and added those of Saturday afternoon makes about three and a half. I find my best way of getting cranberries is to go forth in time of flood, just before the water begins to fall and after strong winds, and, choosing the thickest places, let one, with an instrument like a large coarse dung-fork, hold down the floating grass and other coarser part of the wreck mixed with [it], while another, with a common iron garden rake, rakes them into the boat, there being just enough chaff left to enable you to get them into the boat, yet with little water. When I got them home, I filled a half-bushel basket a quarter full and set it in a tub of water, and, stirring the cranberries, the coarser part of the chaff was held beneath by the berries rising to the top. Then, raising the basket, draining it, and upsetting it into a bread-trough, the main part of the chaff fell uppermost and was cast aside. Then, drain- ing off the water, I jarred the cranberries alternately to this end and then to that of the trough, each time removing the fine chaff — cranberry leaves and bits of grass — which adhered to the bottom, on the principle of gold-washing, except that the gold was what was thrown away, and finally I spread and dried and win- nowed them. It would have been better if the basket had been a very coarse riddle and the trough had had a rough bottom. | The last two nights, at least, there has been no freez- ing. Is not the dew but a humbler, gentler rain, the nightly rain, above which we raise our heads and unobstructedly behold the stars? The mountains are giants which tower above the rain, as we above the dew in the grass; it only wets their feet.

Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also. The drizzling rain of yesterday has not checked the fall of the river. It was raised by the rain of Sunday, the 13th, and began to fall the 20th. P. M. — Up river by boat. I think it must be the white lily root I find gnawed by the rats, though the leaves are pellucid. It has large roots with eyes and many smaller rootlets attached, white tinged with a bluish slate-color. The radical leaves appear to have started again. Turnip freshly in bloom in cultivated fields ; knawel still ; yarrow is par- ticularly fresh and innocent; but I find no blossom on the Arenaria serpyllzfolra. If there is any one with whom we have a quarrel, it is most likely that that one makes some just demand on us which we disappoint. I see still, here and there, a few deep-sunk yellow and decayed pads, the bleared, dulled, drowned eyes of summer. I was just thinking it would be fine to get a specimen leaf from each changing tree and shrub and plant in autumn, in September and October, when it had got its brightest characteristic color, the intermediate ripeness in its transition from the green to the russet or brown state, outline and copy its color exactly with paint in a book,—a book which should be a memorial of Octo- ber, be entitled October Hues or Autumnal Tints. I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata and the tint of the scarlet maple. What a memento such a book would be, beginning with the earliest reddening of the leaves, woodbine and ivy, etc., etc., and the lake of radical leaves, down to the latest oaks!* I might get the impression of their veins and outlines in the summer with lampblack, and after color them. As I was returning down the river toward night, I mistook the creaking of a plow-wheel for a flock of blackbirds passing overhead, but it is too late for them. The farmers plow considerably this month. No doubt it destroys many grubs in the earth.

6 A. M. — To Swamp Bridge Brook mouth. The cocks are the only birds I hear, but they are a host. They crow as freshly and bravely as ever, while poets go down the stream, degenerate into science and prose. I have not seen a flock of small birds, either tree sparrows or fF. hyemalis or white-in-tails, etc., for about a fortnight. ‘There is now no sound of early birds on the leafless trees and bushes — willows and alders —along this watercourse. The few that are left probably roost in the evergreen woods. Yet I hear, or seem to hear, the faintest possible lisp or creak from some sparrow, as if from a crack in the mist-clad earth, or some ox-yoke or distant wain. I suspect that the song sparrow lingers as late, here and there alone, as any migrating bird. | By 8 o'clock the misty clouds disperse, and it turns out a pleasant, calm, and springlike morning. The water, going down, but still spread far over the mead- ows, is seen from the window perfectly smooth and full of reflections. What lifts and lightens and makes heaven of the earth is the fact that you see the reflec- tions of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so. The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does. If I would preserve my relation to nature, I must make my life more moral, more pure and innocent. The problem is as precise and simple as a mathemati- cal one. I must not live loosely, but more and more continently. * What an engineer this water is! It comes with its unerring level, and reveals all the inequalities of the meadow. ‘The farmer may see now what route to take to get the driest and firmest ground for his hay-carts, how to cut his ditches, and / { y~ where to drop more sand. It is an obvious * -(- = - piece of geometry in nature. Every pecu- KS A liar curve in the limbs of the trees is doubly conspicuous seen both above and beneath, yet the a rhyme makes even what was odd, regular what was irregular. For a week or more there has been no freezing day or night. The springs and swamps are getting filled. The Indian summer itself, said to be more remark- able in this country than elsewhere, no less than the reblossoming of certain flowers, the peep of the hylodes, and sometimes the faint warble of some birds, is the reminiscence, or rather the return, of spring, — the year renewing its youth.

Frost on the windows. 10 a. mM. — To Cliffs. A clear, cold, windy day. The water on the mead- ows, which are rapidly becoming bare, is skimmed over and reflects a whitish light, like silver plating, while the unfrozen river is a dark blue. In plowed fields I see the asbestos-like ice-crystals, more or less mixed with earth, frequently curled and curved like crisped locks, where the wet ground has frozen dry. By the spring under Fair Haven Hill, I see the frost about the cistus now at 11 a. M. in the sun. For some weeks I have heard occasionally the hounding of hounds, like a distant natural horn in the clear resonant air. Though the grass has but little life, even in its roots, cattle are still turned out more or less. The landscape, seen from the side of the hill look- ing westward to the horizon through this clear and sparkling air, though simple to barrenness, is very handsome. There is first the clean light-reflecting russet earth, the dark-blue water, the dark or dingy green evergreens, the dull reddish-brown of young oaks and shrub oaks, the gray of maples and other leafless trees, and the white of birch stems. The moun- tains are remarkably distinct and appear near and elevated, but there is no snow on them. The white houses of the village, also, are remarkably distinct and bare and brought very near. Going through the orchard, I saw two birds like jays and soon heard a whistle-like note of alarm, be- tween a robin and a downy woodpecker. Perhaps it was a butcher-bird. A heavy-shouldered hawk sails over. A Solidago nemoralis with flowers still at root. Just after the sun set to-night, I observed that the northern hemisphere of the heavens was covered with fleecy clouds, which abruptly terminated in a straight line, stretching east and west from one horizon to the other directly over my head, the western end being beautifully rose-tinted. Half an hour later this cloud had advanced southward, showing clear sky behind it in the north, until its southern edge was seen at an angle of 45° by [sic] me, but though its line was as straight as before, it now appeared regularly curved hke a segment of a melon-rind, as usual.

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 com- pensation are in the stars now. How bright they are now by contrast with the dark earth! The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk, but the 21st of next month the day will be shorter still by about twenty-five minutes. In December-there will be less light than in any month in the year. It is too cold to-day to use a paddle; the water freezes on the handle and numbs my fingers. I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of a fresh, shining green. Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numer- ous and obvious now.