Four Novembers

It is but a short time these afternoons
before the night cometh in which no man can walk.
If you delay to start till three o’clock,
there will be hardly time left for a long and rich adventure,
to get fairly out of town.
November Eat-heart, is that the name of it?
Not only the fingers cease to do their office,
but there is often a benumbing of the faculties generally.

HDT's Journal, November 25, 1857

It becomes apparent when you read Thoreau’s Journals –
which he kept from 1837 until shortly before his death in 1862 –
that he had a hard time with November.
He would work himself into a very deep funk at that time of year.
I guess any of us who follow the flowers are at a loss as to what to do between the time of the killing frosts and the first gladdening snowfall.

Mercifully that interval is usually a short one, and in no time at all,
we are having fun in the snow.

Well it’s a good thing Henry T. was not around for THIS winter,
because around here, we have basically had four Novembers in a row!  No white Christmas, and precious little snowfall
(most of it an inch at a time, and then quickly melted
by the unusually warm temperatures.)

The most we’ve had was several inches’ worth on the very morning of our Winter Tracking Workshop (thank goodness!)  But since then, the ground has been mostly open.

 Foreboding skies constantly threatened -- but if anything, we got rain. Ugh.

It's enough to stop and make you think.

I’d say the raw-damp-grey days outnumbered the sunny ones,
but you won’t see many photos of those.
I'm in a foul mood, myself!
And have fallen very far behind in my blogging, for one reason or another.

In an attempt to catch up, let me somehow pick out just four days - one day for each of our Four Novembers this winter -
days that, in retrospect, stand out as days well spent.