Journal of a Sabbatical

November 9, 2000

hey

Today's Reading: Circling the Sacred Mountain by Robert Thurman and Tad Wise, Autumn from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake

Hey, my mother is pretty cool. Read about La Madre's latest award here. She's amazing. She just keeps going and going and going like the Energizer bunny in her efforts to end hunger.

I'm back in the groove of following the progress of the seasons in 19th century Concord through Thoreau's journal. So, yesterday and the day before I was commenting on the wildflowers that are still in bloom here in November. For November 9, 1852 Thoreau lists yarrow (which I've been noticing a lot lately), autumnal dandelion (I'm not sure what he means but I have noticed some kind of dandelion that looks a little like hawkweed), tansy, asters, and goldenrod. I haven't seen any tansy still in bloom but have encountered asters and goldenrod. He mentions violets (Viola pedata) in bloom in 1850. Entries for other years don't mention any flowers. I wonder if that's because they were gone by already in those years - maybe an early frost.

Speaking of Thoreau, when I read the July entries (back in July of course) about his trip to the White Mountains, I got this notion in my head to put together a little booklet of quotes from the White Mountains entries with photos from the walking buddies' annual North Conway trip as kind of a hostess present for Rita for this year's trip. This turned into a major project on which I spent a good part of last night and almost all of today. I realized I should annotate the botanical names of the alpine wildflowers he mentions with the common names since the walking buddies are not heavily into botanical names of plants (not that I am either). This took way longer than I thought. I feel immersed in Thoreau. In reading the online edition I found he'd done a detailed vegetation profile of Mount Washington, which was edited out of the H.G.O. Blake edition. This was a fascinating read and I spent a long time deciphering the botanical names for that entry too even though I didn't include any of the vegetation profile in the excerpts for the walking buddies. I have no idea how much of it I retained.