The flight of the leaves.

As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind on a small scale, which carried up the oak leaves from that Island copse in the meadow.

The oak leaves now hang thinly and are very dry and light, and these small whirlwinds, which seem to be occasioned by the sudden hot and calm weather (like whirlpools or dimples in a smooth stream), wrench them off, and up they go, somewhat spirally, in countless flocks like birds, with a rustling sound; and higher and higher into the clear blue deeps they rise above our heads, till they are fairly lost to sight, looking, when last seen, mere light specks against the blue, like stars by day, in fact.

I could distinguish some, I have no doubt, five or six hundred feet high at least, but if I looked aside a moment they were lost.I had never observed this phenomenon so remarkable. This was quite local. Thousands went up together in a rustling flock, -- to descend where?

The flight of the leaves.


H.D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1859

As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind. See April 7, 1860 ("As we were ascending the hill in the road beyond College Meadow, we saw . . . a small whirlwind. . .taking up a large body of withered leaves beneath it, which were whirled about with a great rustling and carried forward with it into the meadow, frightening some hens there.”); December 11, 1858 ("A “swirl,” applied to leaves suddenly caught up by a sort of whirlwind, is a good word enough, methinks.")