Now is the time to enjoy the dry leaves.

October 10.

Some maples which a week ago
were a mass of yellow foliage
are now a fine gray smoke, as it were,
and their leaves cover the ground.

The chickadee, sounding all alone,
now that birds are getting scarce,
reminds me of the winter,
in which it almost alone is heard.

You make a great noise now
walking in the woods.
Now all nature is a dried herb,
full of medicinal odors.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1851

You make a great noise now walking in the woods. See October. 28, 1860 (" We make a great noise going through the fallen leaves in the woods and wood-paths now, so that we cannot hear other sounds")

The chickadee reminds me of the winter. See  October 10, 1856 ("The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard in the yards");See also October 2, 1857 ("The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you."); October 11, 1859 ("The note of the chickadee, heard now in cooler weather and above many fallen leaves, has a new significance."); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish.");  October 15, 1856 (" The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.");   November 4, 1855 (“The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct.”)

Oct. 10. The air this morning is full of bluebirds, and again it is spring. There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season. The blossoming of spring flowers, — not to mention the witch-hazel, — the notes of spring birds, the springing of grain and grass and other plants.

The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard. How agreeable to the eye at this season the color of new-fallen leaves (I am going through the young woods where the locusts grow near Goose Pond), sere and crisp! When freshly fallen, with their forms and their veins still distinct, they have a certain life in them still.

You make a great noise now walking in the woods, on account of the dry leaves, especially chestnut and oak and maple, that cover the ground. I wish that we might make more use of leaves than we do. We wait till they are reduced to virgin mould. Might we not fill beds with them ? or use them for fodder or litter ? After they have been flattened by the snow and rain, they will be much less obvious. Now is the time to enjoy the dry leaves. Now all nature is a dried herb, full of medicinal odors. I love to hear of a preference given to one kind of leaves over another for beds. Some maples which a week ago were a mass of yellow foliage are now a fine gray smoke, as it were, and their leaves cover the ground.

The witch-hazel loves a hillside with or without wood or shrubs. It is always pleasant to come upon it unexpectedly as you are threading the woods in such places. Methinks I attribute to it some elvish quality apart from its fame. It affects a hillside partially covered with young copsewood. I love to behold its gray speckled stems. The leaf first green, then yellow for a short season, then, when it touches the ground, tawny leather color. 

As I stood amid the witch-hazels near Flint's Pond, a flock of a dozen chickadees came flitting and singing about me with great ado, — a most cheering and enlivening sound, — with incessant day-day-day and a fine wiry strain betweenwhiles, flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me; then suddenly, their curiosity satiated, they flit by degrees further away and disappear, and I hear with regret their retreating day-day-days.