Acorns now turned brown and fallen or falling.

September 30

September 30, 2020

I am surprised to see that some red maples, which were so brilliant a day or two ago, have already shed their leaves, and they cover the land and the water quite thickly. I see a countless fleet of them slowly carried round in the still bay by the Leaning Hemlocks.

I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet. I find that it has borne much fruit — small oval bluish berries, those I see — and a very little not ripe is still left. Gray calls it blackish-blue. 

It seems to be contemporary with the sassafras. Both these trees are now particularly forward and conspicuous in their autumnal change. I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant. 

Acorns are generally now turned brown and fallen or falling; the ground is strewn with them and in paths they are crushed by feet and wheels. The white oak ones are dark and the most glossy. The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again. 

The song sparrow is still about, and the blackbird. See a little bird with a distinct white spot on the wing, yellow about eye, and whitish beneath, which I think must-be one of the wrens I saw last spring. 

At present the river’s brim is no longer browned with button-bushes, for those of their leaves which the frost had touched have already fallen entirely, leaving a thin crop of green ones to take their turn.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 30, 1854

A fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet has borne much fruit — small oval bluish berries. See September 7, 1857 ("Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden. “); October 6, 1858 (“The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves”)

...a countless fleet of them slowly carried round in the still bay by the Leaning Hemlocks.   See November 11, 1853 ("As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks

I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant. See September 28, 1854 ("The sassafras trees on the hill are now wholly a bright orange scarlet as seen from my window, and the small ones elsewhere are also changed.")

Road Construction

This morning after dawn

fog rising from Bristol Pond

cornfields yellowed by frost -- 

Mount Abraham.

zphx 20140929

This evening is quite cool and breezy, with a prolonged white twilight.

September 29.

September 29, 2014

P. M. —— To Lee’s Bridge via Mt. Misery and return by Conantum. Yesterday was quite warm, requiring the thinnest coat. To-day is cooler. 

The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds, —— as front of Hubbard’s, — perhaps earlier than usual. 

Bass berries dry and brown. 

Now is the time to gather barberries. 

Looking from the Cliffs, the young oak plain is now probably as brightly colored as it will be. The bright reds appear here to be next the ground, the lower parts of these young trees, and I find on descending that it is commonly so as yet with the scarlet oak, which is the brightest. It is the lower half or two thirds which have changed, and this is surmounted by the slender, still green top. In many cases these leaves have only begun to be sprinkled with bloody spots and stains, — sometimes as if one had cast up a quart of blood from beneath and stained them.

I now see the effect of that long drought on some young oaks, especially black oaks. Their leaves are in many in stances all turned to a clear and uniform brown, having so far lost their vitality, but still plump and full veined and not yet withered. Many are so affected and, of course, show no bright tints. They are hastening to a premature decay. The tops of many young white oaks which had turned are already withered, apparently by frost.

See two either pigeon or sparrow hawks, apparently male and female, the one much larger than the other. 

I see in many places the fallen leaves quite thickly covering the ground in the woods. 

A large flock of crows wandering about and cawing as usual at this season. 

I hear a very pleasant and now unusual strain on the sunny side of an oak wood from many — I think F. hyemalis, though I do not get a clear view of them. Even their slight jingling strain is remarkable at this still season. 

The catbird still mews. 

I see two ducks alternately diving in smooth water near the shore of Fair Haven Pond. Sometimes both are under at once. 

The milkweed down is flying at Clematis Ditch. 

This evening is quite cool and breezy, with a prolonged white twilight, quite Septemberish. 

When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them, they are so simple and remote. Their knowledge is felt to be all terrestrial and to concern the earth alone. It suggests that the same is the case with every object, however familiar; our so-called knowledge of it is equally vulgar and remote. 

One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 29, 1854

Now is the time to gather barberries. See September 29, 1853 (" Barberry ripe."); September 28, 1859 ("Children are now gathering barberries, — just the right time") 

From my window

September 28. 

R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them. 

September 28, 2014

The sassafras trees on the hill are now wholly a bright orange scarlet as seen from my window, and the small ones elsewhere are also changed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 28, 1854

R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall. See September 28, 1851 ("The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mottled."); See also September 29, 1857 ("Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves."); October 1, 1857 ("The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast."); October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish."); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall.")and ```````` also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Fall

The sassafras trees on the hill are now wholly a bright orange scarlet. See September 30, 1854 (“I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant. ”)

Red maples.

September 26.

Took my last bath the 24th. Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold.

It is a warm and very pleasant afternoon, and I walk along the riverside in Merrick’s pasture. I hear a faint jingle from some sparrows on the willows.  

Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off. It is too fair to be believed, especially seen against the light. Some are a reddish or else greenish yellow, others with red or yellow cheeks. I suspect that the yellow maples had not scarlet blossoms.

The bunches of panicled cornel are purple, though you see much of the gray under sides of the leaves. Viburnum dentatum berries still hold on.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 26, 1854

Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines. . . See September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water."); September 25, 1857 ("The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence"); September 27, 1857 ("At last, its labors for the year being consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum.")

A splendid sunset on the water,

 September 25. 

P. M. — To boat opposite Bittern Cliff  via Cliffs. 

Do I see an F. hyemalis in the Deep Cut? It is a month earlier than last year. 

I am detained by the very bright red blackberry leaves strewn along the sod, the vine being inconspicuous.

On the shrub oak plain, as seen from Cliffs, the red at least balances the green. It looks like a rich, shaggy rug now, before the woods are changed. The button-bush leaves are rapidly falling and covering the ground with a rich brown carpet. 

At a distance a fox or an otter withdraws from the riverside.  

I see several smokes in the distance, of burning brush.  I think that if that August haze had been much of it smoke, I should have smelt it much more strongly, for I now smell strongly the smoke of this burning half a mile off, though it is scarcely perceptible in the air.

There is a splendid sunset while I am on the water, beginning at the Clamshell reach. 

There was a splendid sunset while I was on the water , beginning at the Clamshell reach. All the lower edge of a very broad dark-slate cloud which reached up backward almost to the zenith was lit up through and through with a dun golden fire, the sun being be low the horizon . . . a clear, pale robin's-egg sky beneath. 

All the colors are prolonged in the rippled reflection to five or six times their proper length. The effect is particularly remarkable in the case of the reds, which are long bands of red perpendicular in the water.

Bats come out fifteen minutes after sunset, and then I hear some clear song sparrow strains, as from a fence-post amid snows in early spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1854

A sudden and conspicuous fall aspect to the scenery of the river.

September 24.

September 24, 2014

6 A. M. — To Hill. Low fog-like veil on meadows. On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups which have held fruit; and I see one or two elliptical but still green berries. Apparently the rest have ripened and fallen or been gathered by birds already, unless they fell prematurely.

The Viburnum Lentago berries now turn blue-black in pocket, as the nudum did, which last are now all gone, while the Lentago is now just in season.

P. M. —- By boat to Grape Cliff.

These are the stages in the river fall: first, the two varieties of yellow lily pads begin to decay and blacken (long ago); second, the first fall rains come after dog days and raise and cool the river, and winds wash the decaying sparganium, etc., etc., to the shores and clear the channel more or less; third, when the first harder frosts come (as this year the 21st and 22d inst), the button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts.

The first fall is so gradual as not to make much impression, but the last suddenly and conspicuously gives a fall aspect to the scenery of the river. The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. There, where the land appears to lap over the water by a mere edging, these thinner portions are first done brown. I float over the still liquid middle. I have not seen any such conspicuous effect of frost as this sudden withering of the button-bushes.

The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort. I scare up a duck which circles round four times high in the air a diameter of a. hundred rods, and finally alights with a long, slanting flight near where it rose. The muskrats make haste now to rear their cabins and conceal themselves. I see still what I, take to be small flocks of grackles feeding beneath the covert of the button-bushes and flitting from bush to bush. They seldom expose them-selves long. 

See a warbler which inquisitively approaches me creeper-wise along some dead brush twigs. It may be the pine-creeping warbler, though I see no white bars on wings. I should say all yellow olivaceous above; clear lemon-yellow throat and breast; narrow white ring around eye; black bill, straight; clay-colored legs; edge of wings white.

What name of a natural object is most poetic? That which he has given for convenience, whose life is most nearly related to it, who has known it longest and best.

The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1854

The perception of truth . . . produces a pleasurable sensation.See September 1851 (“There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.”); 2/27/1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. August 8, 1852 (" No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”)

Redness on the face of the earth

September 23.

My pink azaleas which had lost their leaves in the drought are beginning to leave out again. 

Sept;mer 23, 2013

Low blackberry vines generally red. The high blueberry bushes scattered here and there, the higher islands in Beck Stow’s Swamp, begin to paint it bright-red. 

Now look out for redness on the face of the earth, such as is seen on the cheek of the sweet Viburnum, or as a frosty morning walk imparts to a man’s face.  Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered. 

Here is an end of its berries then. The hard frosts of the 21st and 22d have put an end to several kinds of plants, and probably berries, for this year.  After those frosts a day’s sun reveals what mischief the frost had done by the withering and blackened leaves. 

Many plants fall with the first frosts.  This is the crisis when many kinds conclude their summer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1854

Are there any finer days in the year than these?

September 22.

The river is peculiarly smooth and the water clear and sunny as I look from the stone bridge. A painted tortoise with his head out, outside of the weeds, looks as if resting in the air with head and flippers outstretched.

As I look off from the hilltop, wonder if there are any finer days in the year than these. The air is so fine and more bracing, and the landscape has acquired some fresh verdure withal. The frosts come to ripen the year, the days, like fruits. 

Crossing the hill behind Minott’s just as the sun is preparing to dip below the horizon, the thin haze in the atmosphere north and south along the west horizon reflects a purple tinge and bathes the mountains with the same, like a bloom on fruits. Is it not another evidence of the ripe days?

What if we were to walk by sunlight with equal abstraction and aloofness, yet with equally impartial observation and criticism. As if it shone not for you, nor you for it, but you had come forth into it for the nonce to admire it. 

By moonlight we are not of the earth earthy, but we are of the earth spiritual. So might we walk by sunlight, seeing the sun but as a moon, a comparatively faint and reflected light, and the day as a brooding night, in which we glimpse some stars still.

By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted. It is simple as bread and water. It is simple as the rudiments of an art, — a lesson to be taken before sunlight, perchance, to prepare us for that.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1854

Any finer days in the year than these. The air is so fine and more bracing. See September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings.");See also September 18, 1858 ("It is a wonderful day."); September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.");  September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, . . . preceded by frosty mornings." ); September 21, 1859 (" A peculiarly fine September day, looking toward the fall, warm and bright.") Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

By moonlight all is simple. We are no longer distracted. See September 21, 1851 ("Moonlight is peculiarly favorable to reflection . It is a cold and dewy light in which the vapors of the day are condensed, and though the air is obscured by darkness, it is more clear.")

First frost; fall colors

September 21. 

The first frost in our yard last night, the grass white and stiff in the morning. The muskmelon vines are now blackened in the sun. The forenoon is cold, and I have a fire, but it is a fine clear day, as I find when I come forth to walk in the afternoon. 

A fine-grained air, seething or shimmering as I look over the fields, reminds me of the Indian summer that is to come. Do not these days always succeed the first frosty mornings?

The red maples, especially at a distance, begin to light their fires, some turning yellow, and within the woods many oak, e.g. scarlet and black and chestnut, and other leaves begin to show their colors. 

With this bright, clear, but rather cool air the bright yellow of the autumnal dandelion is in harmony and the heads of the dilapidated goldenrods. 

The gentian is already frost-bitten almost as soon as it is open. 

Those pretty little white oak acorn stars of three rays are now quite common on the ground. 

Lobelia Dortmanna still out at Flint’s Pond. 

The pond is low near the bathing-rock. 

I hear many jays since the frosts began. The nuthatch is common in woods and on street. Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 21, 1854

The first frost in our yard last night, See September 7, 1857 ("Our first slight frost in some places this morning. Northwest wind to-day and cool weather; such weather as we have not had for a long time, a new experience, which arouses a corresponding breeze in us. "); September 11, 1854 ("This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first - in these respects- decidedly autumnal evening") ;  September 14, 1852 ("This morning the first frost"); September 15, 1851 ("Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.. . .The potato vines and the beans which were still green are now blackened and flattened by the frost."); September 15, 1859 ("This morning the first frost in the garden, killing some of our vines."); September 16, 1854 ("There have been a few slight frosts in some places. "); September 18, 1854 ("I see the potatoes all black with frosts that have occurred within a night or two in Moore’s Swamp."); September 20, 1851 ("On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. . . .All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadows. The cranberries, too, are touched.") ;September 20, 1855 ("First decisive frost, killing melons and beans, browning button-bushes and grape leaves.."); 

 September 22.

These bracing fine days

when frosts come to ripen the

year, the days, like fruit.

September 22, 1854

September 23.

The summer concludes

with the crisis of first frosts.

The end of berries.

September 23, 1854

September 26, 1858 ("Another smart frost, making dry walking amid the stiffened grass in the morning. "); September 28, 1860 ("This morning we had a very severe frost, the first to kill our vines, etc., in garden; what you may call a black frost, - making things look black. Also ice under pump."); September 29, 1860 ("Another hard frost and a very cold day."): September 30, 1860 ("Frost and ice."); October 1, 1852 ("A severer frost last night");. October 1, 1860 (“Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white..”); October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively"); October 6, 1858 ("Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost. The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight"); .October 10, 1857 ("Certainly these are .the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this."); October 11, 1857 ("Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest.");  October 11, 1859 ("There was a very severe frost this morning (ground stiffened)"); October 12, 1859 ("There are now apparently very few ferns left . . . This morning's frost will nearly finish them. . . .We have now fairly begun to be surrounded with the brown of withered foliage. . . This phenomenon begins with the very earliest frost (as this year August 17th), which kills some ferns and other most sensitive plants; and so gradually the plants, or their leaves, are killed and withered that we scarcely notice it till we are surrounded with the scenery of November."); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools,; October 15, 1853 ("Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise."); ; October 15, 1856 (“A smart frost . . . . Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.”); October 16, 1856 (“Ground all white with frost. ”); October 17, 1856 ("Frost has now within three or four days turned almost all flowers to woolly heads, — their November aspect"); October 19, 1856 ("The hypericums — the whole plant — have now generally been killed by the frost"); 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 21, 1852 ("Apparently some flowers yield to the frosts, others linger here and there till the snow buries them."); October 30, 1853(" A white frost this morning, lasting late into the day. This has settled the accounts of many plants which lingered still. . . .What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended.")

The forenoon is cold, and I have a fire, but it is a fine clear day, as I find when I come forth to walk in the afternoon. See September 21, 1857 ("The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days.") See also August 29, 1854 ("I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. ")

The autumnal dandelion. See September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

The gentian is already frost-bitten almost as soon as it is open. See September 14, 1856 ("To Hubbard's Close. Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten ?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th. "); October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively."); October 2, 1857 ("The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered"); October 17, 1856 ("Many fringed gentians quite fresh yet, though most are faded and withered. I suspect that their very early and sudden fading and withering has nothing, or little, to do with frost after all, for why should so many fresh ones succeed still? My pressed ones have all faded in like manner! !"); October 19, 1852 ("I found the fringed gentian now some what stale and touched by frost,"); October 27, 1855 ("There are many fringed gentians, now considerably frost-bitten, in what was E. Hosmer’s meadow between his dam and the road.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

Windy rain-storm last night

September 20.

Windy rain-storm last night. 

See to-day quite a flock of what I think must be rusty grackles about the willows and button-bushes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1854

Windy rain-storm last night. See note to September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.")

See to-day quite a flock of what I think must be rusty grackles See September 20, 1859 ("A blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note very earnestly and not minding me. He is all alone. Has a (rustyish) brown head and shoulders and the rest black. I think it is a grackle. Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place?")

Like light reflected from a fog-bank. A season of prolonged youth.

September 19. 

September 19, 2014

Viburnum Lentago berries now perhaps in prime, though there are but few blue ones.

Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter, I realize how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I think with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I have spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. 

I have given myself up to nature; I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! 

I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter?

It has been my vacation, my season of growth and expansion, a prolonged youth.

An upland plover goes off from Conantum top (though with a white belly), uttering a sharp white, tu white. 

That drought was so severe that a few trees here and there—birch, maple, chestnut, apple, oak—have lost nearly all their leaves. 

I see large flocks of robins with a few flickers, the former keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping. 

Many pignuts have fallen. 

Hardhack is very commonly putting forth new leaves where it has lost the old. They are half an inch or three quarters long, and green the stems well. 

The stone-crop fruit has for a week or more had a purplish or pinkish tinge by the roadside. Fallen acorns in a few days acquire that wholesome shining dark chestnut color. 

Did I see a returned yellow redpoll fly by? 

I saw, some nights ago, a great deal of light reflected from a fog-bank over the river upon Monroe’s white fence, making it conspicuous almost as by moonlight from my window. 

September 19, 2014

(And in the distance

a maple by the water, 

beginning to blush.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1854

I see large flocks of robins keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping.  See September 21, 1853 ("[Near Bangor] saw robins in flocks going south.")

tinyurl.com/HDTFOG

The sequence of fall flowers

September 18.

Fringed gentian near Peter’s out a short time, but as there is so little, and that has been cut off by the mowers, and this is not the leading stem that blooms, it may after all be earlier than the hazel. 

Viburnum nudum in flower again.

I see the potatoes all black with frosts that have occurred within a night or two in Moore’s Swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 18, 1854

The fringed gentian. See  October 19, 1852 ("It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom.") 

Fringed gentian. . .may after all be earlier than the hazel. See September 18, 1856 ("The gentian is now far more generally out here than the hazel."); September 18, 1859 ("From the observation of this year I should say that the fringed gentian opened before the witch-hazel,. . .”); October 2, 1853 ("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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

Mud turtles hatch

September 16.

Sophia and mother returned from Wachusett. S. saw much bayberry in Princeton. 

P. M. —To Fringed Gentian Meadow over Assabet and to Dugan Desert. 

I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now? There have been a few slight frosts in some places. The clematis is feathered. One Asclepias Cornuti begun to discount. I see many hardhacks in the lichen pasture by Tommy Wheeler’s which are leafing out again conspicuously. 

I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise. 

I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest. As the eggs were laid the 7th of June, it makes about three months before they came out of the ground. The nest is full of sand and egg shells. I see no tracks of the old one. I take out the remaining one, and it begins slowly to crawl toward the brook about five rods distant.  It is so slow that I can not stop to watch it, and so carry it to within seven or eight inches of the water, turning its head inland. At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 16, 1854

The eggs were laid the 7th . . . See June 7, 1854 ("A snapping turtle . . . had just been excavating.”)

At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water. See September 11, 1854 (“At length it put its head out far enough to see if the coast was clear, then, with its flippers, it turned itself toward the water”)

The witch-hazel in flower.

September 15.

The witch-hazel has opened since the 8th; say 11th. 

(It was abundantly out yesterday on Wachusett Mountain, where it is probably more exposed to the sun and drier. Sophia was there.)

Its leaves, a third or a half of them, are yellow and brown. 

Solidago speciosa at Clamshell out several days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 15, 1854

The witch-hazel has opened since the 8th; say 11th.. . .. See September 8, 1854 ("The witch-hazel on Dwarf Sumach Hill looks as if it would begin to blossom in a day or two."); September 8, 1856 ("Witch-hazel out, maybe a day or two, in some places,"); September 18, 1856 (The witch-hazel at Conantum just begun here and there; some may have been out two or three days.Yet I saw the witch-hazel out in Brattleboro September 8th, then apparently for a day or two .")

A voyage up the Sudbury

September 14.

To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat.

Quite cool, with some wind from east and southeast. Took a watermelon for drink.

Now, instead of haying, they are raking cranberries all along the river. The raker moves slowly along with a basket before him, into which he rakes (hauling) the berries, and his wagon stands one side. It is now the middle of the cranberry season.

The river has risen about a foot within a week, and now the weeds in midstream have generally disappeared, washed away or drowned. Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst.

This cooler morning methinks the jays are heard more. Now that the pontederias have mostly fallen, the polygonums are the most common and conspicuous flowers of the river.  I see a stream of small white insects in the air over the side of the river.

At a distance, entering the pond, we mistake some fine sparkles, probably of insects, for ducks in the water, they were so large, which when we are nearer, looking down at a greater angle with the surface, wholly disappear. Crossing Fair Haven, the reflections are very fine, prolonged by the ripples made by an east wind just risen. 

The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to

Bidens cernua

Large-flowered bidens,

or beggar-ticks,

or bur-marigold,

now abundant by riverside.

September 19, 1851

The great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, especially at I. Rice’s shore, where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow — Channing says a lemon yellow — and looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). 

Full of the sun. It needs a name.

We see half a dozen herons in this voyage. Their wings are so long in proportion to their bodies that there seems to be more than one undulation to a wing as they are disappearing in the distance, and so you can distinguish them. You see another begin before the first has ended. It is remarkable how common these birds are about our sluggish and marshy river.

A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock,—a sailing (or skimming) flock, that is something rare methinks, — showing their white tails, to alight in a more distant place.

We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1854


Great bidens. See September 13, 1852 ("How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn.")

Needs a name. See September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, but much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river. Omitting this, the first two are inconspicuous flowers, cheap and ineffectual, commonly without petals, like the erechthites, but the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds.")

Tell tale, great yellow-legs. See May 31, 1854 ( "It acts the part of a telltale."   "watchful, but not timid, ... while it stands on the lookout ... wades in the water to the middle of its yellow legs; goes off with a loud and sharp phe phe phe phe. ...")

Swamp thistle amid a clump of raspberry vines.

September 13.

To Great Fields. 

Many butternuts have dropped, —more than walnuts.

A few raspberries still fresh. 

I find the large thistle (Cirsium muticum) out of bloom, seven or eight rods, perhaps, north of the potato-field and seven feet west of ditch, amid a clump of raspberry vines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1854

The red oak began to fall first.

September 12.

A cool, overcast day threatening a storm. Methinks these cool cloudy days are important to show the colors of some flowers, —that with an absence of light their own colors are more conspicuous and grateful against the cool, moist, dark-green earth.

The river has at length risen perceptibly, and bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm.

A sprinkling drives me back for an umbrella. and I start again for Smith’s Hill 'via Hubbard’s Close. I see plump young bluebirds in small flocks along the fences, with only the primaries and tail a bright blue, the other feathers above dusky ashy-brown, tipped with white. 

How much more the crickets are heard a cool, cloudy day like this! 

I see the Epilobium molle in Hubbard’s Close still out, but I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian.

White oak acorns have many of them fallen. They are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them; but frequently three, forming a little star with three rays, looking very artificial. Some black scrub oak acorns have fallen, and a few black oak acorns also have fallen. The red oak began to fall first.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 12, 1854

Small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, commonly arranged two by two . . . See September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.")

The first autumnal evening. A newly hatched turtle as "the result of all turtles that have been."

September 11.


Measured to-day the little Sternothærus odoratus which came out the ground in the garden September 9th.

Its shell is thirty-two fortieths of an inch long, by twenty-five fortieths wide.

It has a distinct dorsal ridge, and its head and flippers are remarkably developed. Its raised back and dorsal ridge, as in the case of the mud turtle, enable it to turn over very easily. 

It may have been hatched some time be fore it came out, for not only there was no trace of the yolk (?), but its shell was much wider than the egg, when it first came out of the ground. 

I placed a sieve over it, and it remained in the hole it had made mostly concealed the two rainy days, — the 9th and 10th, — but to-day I found it against the edge of the sieve, its head and legs drawn in and quite motionless, so that you would have said the pulses of life had not fairly begun to beat. 

I put it into the tub on the edge of the mud. 

It seems that it does not have to learn to walk, but walks at once. It seems to have no infancy such as birds have. 

It is surprising how much cunning it already exhibits. It is defended both by its form and color and its instincts. 

As it lay on the mud, its color made it very inobvious, but, besides, it kept its head and legs drawn in and perfectly still, as if feigning death; but this was not sluggishness. 

At a little distance I watched it for ten minutes or more. 

At length it put its head out far enough to see if the coast was clear, then, with its flippers, it turned itself toward the water (which element it had never seen before), and suddenly and with rapidity launched itself into it and dove to the bottom. Its whole behavior was calculated to enable it to reach its proper element safely and without attracting attention.

Not only was it made of a color and form (like a bit of coal) which alone almost effectually concealed it, but it was made, infant as it was, to be perfectly still as if inanimate and then to move with rapidity when unobserved.

The oldest turtle does not show more, if so much, cunning. I think I may truly say that it uses cunning and meditates how it may reach the water in safety. 

When I first took it out of its hole on the morning of the 9th, it shrunk into its shell and was motionless, feigning death.

That this was not sluggishness, I have proved. 

When to-day it lay within half an inch of the water's edge, it knew it for a friendly element and, without deliberation or experiment, but at last, when it thought me and all foes unobservant of its motions, with remarkable precipitation it committed itself to it as if realizing a long-cherished idea. 

Plainly all its motions were as much the result of what is called instinct as is the act of sucking in infants.

Our own subtlest [sic] is likewise but another kind of instinct. The wise man is a wise infant obeying his finest and never-failing instincts. 

It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been. 

The little snapping turtle lies almost constantly on the mud with its snout out of water. 

It does not keep under water long. 

Yesterday in the cold rain, however, it lay buried in the mud all day! 

Surveying this forenoon, I saw a small, round, bright - yellow gall (some are red on one side), as big as a moderate cranberry, hard and smooth, saddled on a white oak twig. 

So I have seen them on the swamp white, the chinquapin, and the white, not to mention the Castile-soap one on the ilicifolia acorn edge. 

This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first in these respects decidedly autumnal evening. 

It makes us think of wood for the winter. 

For a week or so the evenings have been sensibly longer, and I am beginning to throw off my summer idleness. 

This twilight is succeeded by a brighter starlight than heretofore.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1854

The little Sternotherus odoratus which came out the ground in the garden September 9th [impresses me as]  all the past of turtledom and of the earth. . . the result of all the turtles that have been. See September 9, 1854 ("The earth has some virtue in it; when seeds are put into it, they germinate; when turtles’ eggs, they hatch in due time. Though the mother turtle remained and brooded them, it would still nevertheless be the universal world turtle which, through her, cared for them as now. Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.")

At length it put its head out far enough to see if the coast was clear, then, with its flippers, it turned itself toward the water. See September 16, 1854 ("I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest . . . At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water.")

This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first - in these respects- decidedly autumnal evening. See September 11, 1853 ("Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. A great change . . . The air has got an autumnal coolness which it will not get rid of again. Signs of frost last night.") See also   August 28, 1853 ("A cool, white, autumnal evening.");September 7, 1857 ("Our first slight frost in some places this morning. Northwest wind to-day and cool weather; such weather as we have not had for a long time, a new experience, which arouses a corresponding breeze in us. "); September 10, 1860 ("There was a frost this morning. "); September 14, 1852 ("This morning the first frost")

The drought ends?

September 10.

Yesterday and to-day the first regular rain-storm, bringing down more leaves, and decidedly raising the river and brooks. The still, cloudy, mizzling days, September 1st and 2d, the thunder-shower of evening of September 6th, and this regular storm are the first fall rains after the long drought.

Already the grass both in meadows and on hills looks greener, and the whole landscape, this overcast rainy day, darker and more verdurous. Hills which have been russet and tawny begin to show some greenness.

On account of the drought one crop has almost entirely failed this year thus far, which the papers have not spoken of. Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all, — a failure more perceptible to frogs and toads, but no doubt serious to those whom it concerns.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1854

The first fall rains after the long drought. See June 19, 1854 (“Suddenly comes the gust, and the big drops slanting from the north. . . It rains against the windows like hail . . .Soon silver puddles shine in the streets. This the first rain of consequence for at least three weeks.”);  July 14, 1854 (“Awake to day of gentle rain, — very much needed; none to speak of for nearly a month, methinks”); August 19, 1854 ("There is now a remarkable drought, some of whose phenomena I have referred to during several weeks past.”).