Indian-summer-like and gossamer.

October 19

I examine that oak lot of Rice's next to the pine strip of the 16th. The oaks (at the southern end) are about a dozen years old. As I expected, I find the stumps of the pines which stood there before quite fresh and distinct, not much decayed, and I find by their rings that they were about forty years old when cut, while the pines that sprang from them are now about twenty-five or thirty.

But further, and unexpectedly, I find the stumps in great numbers, now much decayed, of an oak wood that stood there more than sixty years ago. They are mostly shells, the sap-wood rotted off and the inside turned to mould. Thus I distinguished four successions of trees.

I can easily find in countless numbers in our forests, frequently in the third succession, the stumps of the oaks that were cut near the end of the last century. Perhaps I can recover thus generally the oak
woods of the beginning of the last century.  

I have an advantage over the geologist, for I can not only detect the order of events but also the time during which they elapsed, by counting the rings on the stumps. 

Thus I unroll the rotten papyrus on which the history of the Concord forest is written.

It is easier far to recover the history of the trees which stood here a century or more ago than it is to recover the history of the men who walked beneath them. How much do we know - how little more can we know - of these two centuries of Concord life?
 
H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 19, 1860