When we ripple the surface, the undulating light is reflected from the waves.

It is a clear, cool, November-ish morning, reminding me of those peculiarly pleasant mornings in winter when there is a slight vapor in the atmosphere. On the hill, I see flocks of robins, flitting from tree to tree and peeping. The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones. 

It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon. The river is so high over the meadows, and the water is so smooth and glassy withal, that I am reminded of a calm April day during the freshets. The coarse withered grass, and the willows, and button-bushes with their myriad balls, and whatever else stands on the brink, are reflected with wonderful distinctness. This shore, thus seen from the boat, is like the ornamented frame of a mirror. 


When we ripple the surface, the undulating light is reflected from the waves upon the bank and bushes and withered grass.

Is not this already November, when the yellow and scarlet tints are gone from the forest ?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1853

The landscape prepared for winter.

October 30

Sunday.

A white frost this morning, lasting late into the day.

This has settled the accounts of many plants which lingered still.

P. M. – To Hubbard's Meadow Wood.

I see tree sparrows in loose flocks, chasing one an other, on the alders and willows by the brook-side. They keep up a general low and incessant twittering warble, as if suppressed, very sweet at this season, but not heard far. It is, as Wilson says, like a chip-bird, but this has a spot commonly on breast and a bright chestnut crown. It is quite striped (bay and brown with dark) above and has a forked tail.

I am not quite sure that I have seen them before. They are a chubby little bird, and have not the stripes on the breasts which the song sparrow has. The last, moreover, has not that striped bay and blackish and ash above. 

By the bathing-place, I see a song sparrow with his full striped breast. He drops stealthily behind the wall and skulks amid the bushes ; now sits behind a post, and peeps round at me, ever restless and quirking his tail, and now and then uttering a faint chip. It is not so light beneath as the last.

The muskrat-houses are mostly covered with water now.

Saw a Solidago nemoralis in full flower yesterday.

Here is the autumnal dandelion and fragrant ever lasting to-day.

What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended.

Those which still hang on the trees are withered and dry.

I am surprised at the change since last Sunday. Looking at the distant woods, I perceive that there is no yellow nor scarlet there now.

They are (except the evergreens) a mere dull, dry red. The autumnal tints are gone.

What life remains is merely at the foot of the leaf-stalk.

The woods have for the most part acquired their winter aspect, and coarse, rustling, light-colored withered grasses skirt the river and the wood-side.

This is November. The landscape prepared for winter, without snow.

When the forest and fields put on their sober winter hue, we begin to look more to the sunset for color and variety.

Now, now is the time to look at the buds of the swamp-pink,— some yellowish, some, mixed with their oblong seed-vessels, red, etc. 

The larger red maple buds have now two sets of scales, three in each.

The water andromeda is still green.

Along the Depot Brook, the great heads of Aster puniceus stand dry and fuzzy and singularly white, — like the goldenrods and other asters, — but some quite low are still green and in flower.

The prevalence of this light, dry color perhaps characterizes November, — that of bleaching withered grass, of the fuzzy gray goldenrods, harmonizing with the cold sunlight, and that of the leaves which still hang on deciduous trees.

The dead-looking fruit of the alders is now conspicuous.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1853

"...the fall has ended." See November 11, 1851 ("The fall of the year is over, and now let us see if we shall have any Indian summer.)

The prevalence of this light, dry color perhaps characterizes November, — that of bleaching withered grass. See October 27, 1858 (“countless sedges and grasses ...become pale-brown and bleached after the frost has killed them, and give that peculiar light, almost silvery, sheen to the fields in November.”)
See also  This is November

I see tree sparrows in loose flocks, chasing one an other, on the alders and willows by the brook-side.
See November 4, 1860 ("White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. May have begun for a week. To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

Reflected moods of the seasons.

October 26

October 26, 2019

It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. 

You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. 

When I meet with any such in my Journal, it affects me as poetry.  I appreciate that other season and that particular phenomenon more than at the time. Only the rarest flower, the purest melody, of the season thus comes down to us. 

The world so seen is all one spring, and full of beauty. 

April 26, 2021

(What we should have called

a warm day in March is a

cold one at this date.

April 26, 1860)

As I go up the back road, see fresh sprouts in bloom on a tall rough goldenrod. 

The dense maple swamp against Potter's pasture is completely bare, and the ground is very thickly strewn with leaves, which conceal the wet places. 

October 26, 2018

Now leaves are off, or chiefly off, I begin to notice the buds of various form and color and more or less conspicuous, prepared for another season, — partly, too, perhaps, for food for birds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1853

It is surprising how any reminiscence of a different season of the year affects us. See May 10, 1852 ("We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then.”); April 7, 1853 ("If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged.”); August 24, 1852 (“The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each da ywhich, summed up, would be the history of the year,”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

I begin to notice the buds. See October 12, 1858 ("The leaves of the azaleas are falling, mostly fallen, and revealing the large blossom-buds, so prepared are they for another year. "): October 25, 1858 ("Now that the leaves are fallen (for a few days), the long yellow buds (often red-pointed) which sleep along the twigs of the S. discolor are very conspicuous and quite interesting, already even carrying our thoughts for ward to spring. I noticed them first on the 22d. They may be put with the azalea buds already noticed. Even bleak and barren November wears these gems on her breast in sign of the coming year."); October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring.");January 25, 1858 ("What a rich book might be made about buds.")

https://tinyurl.com/HDT531026

.

The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.

October 25.

7 A M To Hubbard s Grove .

The rain is over, the ground swept and washed. There is a high and cold west wind.  Birds fly with difficulty against it.   The brooks and the river are unexpectedly swelled with yesterday’s rain. The river is a very dark blue. The wind roars in the wood.  A maple is blown down.

PM -- Sail down river to the pitch pine hill behind Abner Buttrick's, with a strong northwest wind, and cold. 

The white maples are completely bare. The tall dry grass along the shore rustles in the cold wind. The shores are very naked now. 

I am surprised to see how much the river has risen.

The swamp white oaks in front of N. Barrett's — their leafy tops — look quite silvery at a distance in the sun, very different from near to.  

The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 25, 1853

The tall dry grass along the shore rustles in the cold wind. See October 25, 1854 ("[T]he withered reeds on the brink reflected in the water."); October 25, 1855 ("The dead wool-grass, etc., characterizes the shore.”)

The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight. See October 25, 1858 (“The silvery sheen of pine—needles; i. e., when its old leaves have fallen and trees generally are mostly bare, in the cool Novemberish air and light we observe and enjoy the trembling shimmer and gleam of the pine-needles.”) See also October 22, 1851 ("[T]he ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles. "); October 26, 1855 ("The hillside is slippery with new-fallen white pine leaves. “) and 

A Book of the Seasons ;, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Fall

Three dusky ducks

October 20. 

October 20, 2013

At Beck Stow's surveying, thinking to step upon a leafy shore from a rail, I get into water more than a foot deep.  While wringing my wet stockings, I hear a rush of wings, look up, and see three dusky ducks swiftly circling over the small water. 

They round far away, but soon return and settle within about four rods. They first survey the spot. Wonder they do not see me. 

At first they are suspicious, hold up their heads and sail about. Do they not see me through the thin border of leafless bushes? At last one dips his bill, and they begin to feed amid the pads. I suddenly rise, and  instantly they dive as at a flash, then at once rise again and all go off, with a low wiry note.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1853

Uncluttered Nature. The economy of leaves.

October 20. 

How pleasant to walk over beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling fallen leaves, — clean, crisp, and wholesome! How beautiful they go to their graves!  — painted of a thousand hues.  How they are mixed up, all species, — oak and maple and chestnut and birch! 

Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high!

So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. 

They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay. Nature is not cluttered with them. She is a perfect husbandman; she stores them all. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1853

Oct. 20. How pleasant to walk over beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling fallen leaves, — young hyson, green tea, clean, crisp, and wholesome! How beautiful they go to their graves ! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould ! — painted of a thousand hues and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. They put on no weeds. Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high ! How they are mixed up, all species, — oak and maple and chestnut and birch! They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay. Nature is not cluttered with them. She is a perfect husbandman; she stores them all. See October 22, 1853 ("The year's great crop. . . .. It prepares the virgin mould for future corn fields on which the earth fattens. They teach us how to die. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! A myriad wrappers for germinating seeds. By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. The ground is all parti-colored with them. For beautiful variety can any crop be compared with them? ')

Hunter's Moon. Mt. Pritchard.

October 18.


Hunter's moon. Jane and I hike to the moss ledge where we have an open view. It is 8:02 PM, twelve minutes past the peak of the partial eclipse. The crickets are silent. The moon is bright, casting sharp shadows as if daylight; then shines through a moving cloud like a jack-o-lantern cat. The dogs sit and watch the sky. zphx 20131018

Leaves on the water.

October 19.

Paddle E. Hoar and Mrs. King up the North Branch.

A seed of wild oat left on. 

The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore, and rustle pleasantly when the wave which the boat creates strikes them.

H.  D. Thoreau, Journal, October 19, 1853

A seed of wild oat left on. See June 3, 1853 (" Is that rank grass by the Red Bridge already between three and four feet high wild oats?"); August 15, 1858 ("Wild oats, apparently in prime. This is quite interesting and handsome, so tall and loose. The lower, spreading and loosely drooping, dangling or blown one side like a flag, staminate branches of its ample panicle are of a lively yellowish green, contrasting with the very distant upright pistillate branches, suggesting a spear with a small flag at the base of its head. It is our wild grain, unharvested") [Note: "Wild oat" here refers to Zizania aquatica (wild rice) not sessille bellwort. See Botanical Index to Thoreau's Journal and note to September 24, 1852 ("The zizania ripe, shining black, cylindrical kernels, five eighths of an inch long").See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts]

The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore. See October 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it,"); 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 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet."); October 17, 1856 ("Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye."); October 17, 1857 ("The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them."); October 17, 1858 ("They remind me of ditches in swamps, whose surfaces are often quite concealed by leaves now. The waves made by my boat cause them to rustle, ")

A sketch of autumn

October 18.

With Sophia boat to Fair Haven, where she makes a sketch. 

The red maples have been bare a good while. In the sun and this clear air, their bare ashy branches even sparkle like silver. The woods are losing their bright colors. The muskrat-houses are more sharpened now. I find my boat all covered — the bottom and seats — with the yellow leaves of the golden willow under which it is moored, and if I empty it, it is full again to-morrow. Some white oaks are salmon-red, some lighter and drier. The black oaks are a greenish yellow. Poplars, rich yellow.
 
Returning late, we see a double shadow of ourselves and boat, one, the true, quite black, the other directly above it and very faint, on the willows and high bank.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1853

The red maples have been bare a good while.  See October 18, 1855 ("The maple swamps, bare of leaves."); October 18, 1857 ("The red maples are now fairly bare,")

Double shadow of ourselves and boat ... See note to August 16, 1854 (" The distinct shadow of our shadows, — first on the water, then the double one on the bank bottom to bottom, one being upside down, — three in all, — one on water, two on land or bushes.")

Hunter's Moon. Walk to White Pond.

October 16. 

October 16.

The third pleasant day. Hunter's Moon. Walk to White Pond. 

The Polygonum dumetorum in Tarbell's Swamp lies thick and twisted, rolled together, over the loose raised twigs on the ground, as if woven over basketwork, though it is now all sere. 

The Marchantia polymorpha is still erect there. Viola ovata out. 

The Lysimachia stricta, with its long bulb-lets in the axils, how green and fresh by the shore of the pond! 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1853

The Lysimachia strida, with its long bulb-lets in the axils, how green and fresh by the shore of the pond! See October 5, 1856 ("Long pointed reddish bulbs in the axils of the Lysimachia stricta are one of the signs of the season .")

And now, when the morning wind rises, how the leaves come down in showers.

October 15.

October 15

Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise. And now, when the morning wind rises, how the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost! They suddenly form thick beds or carpets on the ground in this gentle air, — or without wind, — just the size and form of the tree above.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1853

Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise. See October 16, 1856 (“Ground all white with frost. ”); October 15, 1856 (“A smart frost . . . . Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.”); October 21, 1857 (“First ice that I’ve seen or heard of, a tenth of an inch thick in yard, and the ground is slightly frozen.”); October 1, 1860 (“Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white at 7 A.M.”)

How the leaves come down in showers . . . suddenly form thick beds or carpets on the ground just the size and form of the tree above. . . .See October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet, leaves which apparently came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost.”) See also October 14, 1857 ("On the causeway I pass by maples here and there which are bare and smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing; but there it lies, nearly as bright as ever, on one side on the ground, making nearly as regular a figure as lately on the tree. I should rather say that I first observed the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent colored and substantial shadow, and they alone suggested to look for the trees that had borne them.")

tinyurl.com/HDT531015

Fall birds in flocks

October 10.

This morning it is very pleasant and warm. There are many small birds in flocks on the elms in Cheney's field, faintly warbling, — robins and purple finches and especially large flocks of small sparrows, which make a business of washing and pruning them selves in the puddles in the road, as if cleaning up after a long flight and the wind of yesterday. 

The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring. 

Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1853

The robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring. See October 10, 1851 ("There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season"); and note to  October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers. ")

The elm leaves come down again. See October 10, 1852 ("The streets are strewn with elm leaves.")

It takes the rest of the day to row back against the wind.

October 9.

 

October 9, 2013

A high wind south of westerly. Set sail with W. E. C. down the river. 

The red maples are now red and also yellow and reddening. The white maples are green and silvery, also yellowing and blushing. The birch is yellow; the black willow brown; the elms sere, brown, and thin; the bass bare. The button-bush, which was so late, is already mostly bare except the lower part, protected. The swamp white oak is green with a brownish tinge; the white ash turned mulberry. The white maples toward Ball's Hill have a burnt white appearance; the white oak a salmon-color and also red. Is that scarlet oak rosed? Huckleberries and blackberries are red. Leaves are falling; apples more distinctly seen on the trees; muskrat-houses not quite done. 

This wind carries us along glibly, I think six miles an hour, till we stop in Billerica, just below the first bridge beyond the Carlisle Bridge, — at the Hibiscus Shore. 

I collect some hibiscus seeds and swamp white oak acorns, and we walk on thence, a mile or more further, over scrubby hills which with a rocky core border the western shore, still in Billerica, at last not far above the mills. 

At one place, opposite what I once called Grape Island (still unchanged), I smell grapes, and though I see no vines at first, they being bare of leaves, at last find the grapes quite plenty and ripe and fresh enough on the ground under my feet. Ah! their scent is very penetrating and memorable. 

Did we not see a fish hawk? 

We find ourselves in an extensive wood here, which we do not get out of. 

It takes the rest of the day to row back against the wind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1853

I smell grapes, . . . their scent is very penetrating and memorable. See September 4, 1853 ("The fragrance of a grape-vine branch, with ripe grapes on it, which I have brought home, fills the whole house. This fragrance is exceedingly rich, surpassing the flavor of any grape."); September 8, 1854 ("I partly smell them out. . . .I bring home a half-bushel of grapes to scent my chamber with. As I paddle home with my basket of grapes in the bow, every now and then their perfume was wafted to me in the stern, and I think that I am passing a richly laden vine on shore.”):  September 13, 1856 (“. . . the best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they fill all the air with their fragrance, as we row along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its maturity.”) 

A mouse's nest

October 8. 

Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest in the prinos swamp, while surveying on the new Bedford road to-day, topped over with moss, and a hole on one side, like a squirrel-nest.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1853

Find a bird's nest converted into a mouse's nest. See December 13, 1852 (“I observed a mouse . . . had neatly covered over a thrasher or other bird's nest . . .and lined it warmly with that common kind of green moss . . .but chiefly with a kind [of] vegetable wool”); February 18, 1857 ("Picked up a mouse-nest in the stubble at Hubbard's mountain sumachs, left bare by the melting snow.”);  April 24, 1857 (“Saw on a small oak slanting over water in a swamp, in the midst of a mass of cat-briar, about ten feet from the ground, a very large nest, of that hypnum (?) moss, in the form of an inverted cone, one foot across above and about eight inches deep, with a hole in the side very thick and warm; probably a mouse-nest, for there were mouse droppings within.”); November 15, 1857 (“It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves . . .”)

The howling of the wind.

October 5. 

The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds like a loon on the pond. How fit. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 5, 1853

Sounds like a loon on the pond. See October 3, 1852 ("Hear the loud laughing of a loon . . .A wild sound, heard far and suited to the wildest lake."); October 8, 1852 ("As I was paddling along the north shore, 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 19, 1859 ("C. says that he saw a loon at Walden the 15th.")

The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten

October 2. 


Sunday. 

The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively. As the witch-hazel is raised above frost and can afford to be later, for this reason also I think it is so. 

The white pines have scarcely begun at all to change here, though a week ago last Wednesday they were fully changed at Bangor. There is fully a fortnight's difference, and methinks more. The witch-hazel, too, was more forward there. 

There are but few and faint autumnal tints about Walden yet. The smooth sumach is but a dull red.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1853

The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively. See October 2, 1857 ("The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered"); October 19, 1852 (“ It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, . . . this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower . . .the latest of all to begin to bloom, unless it be the witch-hazel. ”) and A Book of the Seasons: The Fringed Gentian.

Grape vines, curled, crisped, and browned by the frosts

October 1.

A-barberrying by boat to Conantum, carrying Ellen, Edith, and Eddie.

Grapevines, curled, crisped, and browned by the frosts, are now more conspicuous than ever. Some grapes still hang on the vines. 

Got three pecks of barberries. 

Huckleberries begin to redden. 

Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about. 

Flowers are scarce.

October 1, 2013

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 1, 1853

A-barberrying by boat to Conantum, carrying Ellen, Edith, and Eddie. See September 18, 1856 ("By boat to Conantum, barberrying ."); September 25, 1855 ("Carry Aunt and Sophia a-barberrying to Conantum.")  See also  April 1, 1857 ("I see children picking spring cranberries in the meadows. "); June 29, 1852 ("Children bring you the early blueberry to sell now."); July 16, 1851 ("Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are planning expeditions after them."); July 24, 1853 ("This season of berrying is so far respected that the children have a vacation to pick berries"); July 31, 1856 ("How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries. . . The children should grow rich if they can get eight cents a quart for black berries, as they do."); August 5, 1852 ("The men, women, and children who perchance come hither blueberrying in their season get more than the value of the berries in the influences of the scene"); August 12, 1856 (" The Emerson children say that Aralia nudicaulis berries are good to eat."); August 27, 1859 ("The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week.") See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry

Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about.  See September 18, 1852 ("The robins of late fly in flocks, and I hear them oftener."); September 19, 1854 ("I see large flocks of robins keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping."); October 10, 1853 ("The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring.") October 16, 1857 ("A robin sings once or twice, just as in spring! "); October 18, 1857 ("I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries"); October 20, 1857 ("The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them."); October 31, 1851 ("The robins now fly in flocks.")