Sat with open window for a week.

October 31.

Rain; still warm. 

Ever since October 27th we have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1854

Peculiarly fresh scarlet

October 29.

October 29.

Detected a large English cherry in Smith’s woods beyond Saw Mill Brook by the peculiar fresh orange-scarlet color of its leaves, now that almost all leaves are quite dull or withered. The same in gardens. The gooseberry leaves in our garden and in fields are equally and peculiarly fresh scarlet.

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

Detected a large English cherry by the peculiar fresh orange-scarlet color of its leaves. See October 13, 1857 ("Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red orange color."); October 29, 1858 ("the cultivated cherry is quite handsome orange, often yellowish").See also September 30, 1854 (“I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant. ”); 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.")

The woods begin to look bare

October 28, 2014

October. 28

The woods begin to look bare, reflected in the water, and I look far in between the stems of the trees under the bank. Birches, which began to change and fall so early, are still in many places yellow.




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

Birches . . . are still in many places yellow. See October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 26, 1860 ("This is the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.")

As the woods grow more silent

October 26. 

As warm as summer. Cannot wear a thick coat. Sit with windows open. 

I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhere. Is it the tree sparrows whose jingles I hear? 

As the weather grows cooler and the woods more silent, I attend to the cheerful notes of chickadees on their sunny sides. 

Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple.

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

Sit with windows open. See October 31, 1854 ("[W]e have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week."); October 21, 1855 ("I sit with an open window, it is so warm.");  November 8, 1855 ("I can sit with my window open and no fire. Much warmer than this time last year."); October 10, 1856 ("This afternoon it is 80°, . . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night").

As the weather grows cooler and the woods more silent, I attend to the cheerful notes of chickadees. See October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter,in which it almost alone is heard.")

A calm afternoon

October 25.

On Assabet. 

The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed. 

A beautiful, calm Indian-summer afternoon, the withered reeds on the brink reflected in the water.

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


The great hornet nests are exposed. See  October 4, 1858 ("Hornets are still at work in their nests."); October 15, 1855 (“The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone.”); October 24, 1858 ("That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.") See also September 25, 1851 ("The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance.")

Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods.

October 22.

This and the last two days Indian-summer weather, following hard on that sprinkling of snow west of Concord. Pretty hard frosts these nights. 

Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets. Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods. Bass trees are bare. 

The redness of huckleberry bushes is past its prime. 

I see a snapping turtle, not yet in winter quarters. The chickadees are picking the seeds out of pitch pine cones.

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

Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods See October 22, 1857 ("As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing.") See also  October 10, 1851 ("You make a great noise now walking in the woods.”); 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. . .”); October 28, 1852 ("I hear no sound but the rustling of the withered leaves, and, on the wooded hilltops, the roar of the wind.")

Sunrise from the mountain-top

October 20. 

October 20, 2014

See the sun rise from the mountain-top. This is the time to look westward. All the villages, steeples, and houses on that side were revealed; but on the east all the landscape was a misty and gilded obscurity.

It was worth the while to see westward the countless hills and fields now white with frost. A little white fog marked the site of many a lake and the course of the Nashua, and in the east horizon the great pond had its own fog mark in a long, low bank of cloud. 

Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State, its apex resting on the Green or Hoosac Mountains, appearing as a deep-blue section of a cone there. It rapidly contracted, and its apex approached the mountain itself, and when about three miles distant the whole conical shadow was very distinct. 

The shadow of the mountain makes some minutes’ difference in the time of sunrise to the inhabitants of Hubbardston, within a few miles west.

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

Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State. See October 19, 1857 ("Mr. Sanborn tells me that he looked off from Wachusett last night, and that he saw the shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon"); June 3, 1858 ("It was still hazy, and we did not see the shadow of the mountain until it was comparatively short.")

First snow on Wachusett Mountain

October 19.

October 19, 2014

To Westminster by cars; thence on foot to Wachusett Mountain, four miles to Foster’s, and two miles thence to mountain-top by road. 

The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow, the first I have seen. We find a little on the mountain-top. 

The prevailing tree on this mountain, top and all, is apparently the red oak, which toward and on the top is very low and spreading. On the sides, beside red oak, are rock maple, yellow birch, lever-wood, beech, chestnut, shagbark, hemlock, striped maple, witch-hazel, etc., etc. 

With a glass you can see vessels in Boston Harbor from the summit, just north of the Waltham hills.

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

The country above Littleton. See December 16, 1857 ("Plowed grounds show white first.”)

The October Pine Fall

R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them. Journal, September 28, 1854

The white pines have scarcely begun at all to change here, though a week ago last Wednesday they were fully changed at Bangor.  Journal, October 2, 1853

The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish. Journal, October 3, 1852

White pines are apparently ready to fall. Some are much paler brown than others. Journal, October 11, 1858

A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods. The forest is laying down her carpet for the winter.
Journal, October 12, 1852

A thick carpet of white pine needles lies now lightly, half an inch or more in thickness, above the dark-reddish ones of last year. Journal, October 13, 1854 

The pines are now two-colored, green and yellow, - the latter just below the ends of the boughs.  Journal, October 14, 1852

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. Journal, October 14, 1856

The pines, too, have fallen. Journal, October 16, 1854

How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground! quite like a carpet. Throughout this grove no square foot is left bare. Journal, October 16, 1855

The pines, both white and pitch, have now shed their leaves, and the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles.  Journal, October 22, 1851

The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight. Journal, October 25, 1853

The white pine needles on the ground are already turned considerably redder. October 28, 1857



See also A Book of the Seasons:  The pine fall ("There is a season when pine leaves are yellow, and when they are fallen."

Young black birches and red maples are changed about Walden

October 1.

The young black birches about Walden, next the south shore, are now commonly clear pale yellow, very distinct at distance, like bright-yellow white birches, so slender amid the dense growth of oaks and evergreens on the steep shores. 

  

The black birches and red maples are the conspicuous trees changed about the pond.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 1, 1854

The young black birches about Walden, next the south shore, are now commonly clear pale yellow, very distinct at distance. See October 3, 1858 ("About the pond I see maples of all their tints, and black birches (on the southwest side) clear pale yellow")