Wednesday, October 3, 2012

At Flint's Pond


October 3.


Hear the loud laughing of a loon on Flint's, apparently alone in the middle. A wild sound, heard far and suited to the wildest lake. 

Many acorns strew the ground, and have fallen into the water. 

The Aster undulates is common and fresh, also the Solidago nemoralis of Gray. 

The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 3, 1852

A wild sound, heard far and suited to the wildest lake. See The Maine Woods ("Monday, July 27[,1857]. . . . (we heard the voice of the loon, loud and distinct, from far over the lake. It is a very wild sound, quite in keeping with the place and the circumstances”); October 8, 1852 ("after having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly a loon, sailing toward the middle, a few rods in front, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself.”); October 5, 1853 ("The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds like a loon on the pond. How fit”);

The Aster undulates is common and fresh. See October 6, 1858 (“The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path.")

The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish. 
See  October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall."); October 3, 1858 ("White pines fairly begin to change.") See also )October 1, 1857 ("The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast."); October 2, 1853 ("The white pines have scarcely begun at all to change here, though a week ago last Wednesday they were fully changed at Bangor ") See also November 9, 1850 (" I expect to find that it is only for a few weeks in the fall after the new leaves have done growing that there are any yellow and falling, — that there is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now yellow, and again, they are fallen."); See also Henry Thoreau, A Book of the Seasons, the pine fall.

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