There is a
clear air and a strong northwest wind drying up the washed earth after the
heavy rain of yesterday. The road looks smooth and white as if washed and
swept.
I climb Annursnack.
Under this strong wind more dry oak leaves are rattling down.
All winter is their fall. A distinction is to be made between those trees whose leaves fall as soon as the bright autumnal tints are gone and they are withered and those whose leaves are rustling and falling all winter even into spring.
October is
the month of painted leaves, of ripe leaves, when all the earth, not merely
flowers, but fruits and leaves, are ripe. With respect to its colors and its
season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the
sunset sky. This rich glow flashes round the world.
This light
fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November, and what ever more
glowing sunset or Indian summer we have then is the afterglow of the year.
In October
the man is ripe even to his stalk and leaves; he is pervaded by his genius,
when all the forest is a universal harvest, whether he possesses the enduring
color of the pines, which it takes two years to ripen and wither, or the
brilliant color of the deciduous trees, which fade the first fall.
From this
hill I am struck with the smoothness and washed appearance of all the
landscape. All these russet fields and swells look as if the withered grass had
been combed by the flowing water. Not merely the sandy roads, but the fields
are swept. All waters — the rivers and ponds and swollen brooks — and many new
ones are now seen through the leafless trees — are blue reservoirs of dark
indigo amid the general russet and reddish-brown and gray.
October
answers to that period in the life of man when he is no longer dependent on his
transient moods, when all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root,
branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his
spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit.
Now for the
bare branches of the oak woods, where hawks have nested and owls perched, the
sinews of the trees, and the brattling of the wind in their midst. For, now
their leaves are off, they've bared their arms, thrown off their coats, and,
in the attitude of fencers, await the onset of the wind.
H. D.
Thoreau, Journal,
November 14, 1853
October is the month of painted leaves, of ripe leaves, when all the earth, not merely flowers, but fruits and leaves, are ripe. With respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky. This rich glow flashes round the world. This light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November, See October 24, 1858 (" Every fruit, on ripening, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. . . . The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth as it were, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever one cheek toward the sun.")
What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit. See August 18, 1853 (The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent? The year is full of warnings of its shortness, as is life.)
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