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? 

October 26, 2022

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

Cannot wear a thick coat. See October 21, 1856 ("A very warm Indian-summer day, too warm for a thick coat."); Compare October 25, 1858 ("This is the coolest day thus far, reminding me that I have only a half-thick coat on. "); October 26, 1858 ("I wear a thicker coat, my single thick fall coat, at last, and begin to feel my fingers cool early and late.")

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.") See also October 10, 1856 ("This afternoon it is 80°, . . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night").;  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.")

I see considerable gossamer. See October 31, 1858 ("It is a fine day, Indian-summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees "); November 1, 1851 (" It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

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."); October 23, 1852 ("The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note."); November 4, 1855 ("The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple. See October 26, 1858 ("The sugar maples are about bare, except a few small ones."); See also October 16, 1854 ("The ash and most of the elm trees are bare of leaves; the red maples also."); October 18, 1857 ("The bass and the black ash are completely bare; how long?"); October 19, 1856 (“Both the white and black ash are quite bare, and some of the elms there.”);   October 22, 1858 ("Apple orchards throughout the village, or on lower and rich ground, are quite green, but on this drier Fair Haven Hill all the apple trees are yellow, with a sprinkling of green and occasionally a tinge of scarlet, i. e. are russet."); October 23, 1853 ("Apple trees yellow and brown and partly bare; white ash bare (nearly)."); October 24, 1853 ("Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape."); October 31, 1858 ("the apple trees, which are half of them bare.")

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

As woods grow silent

we attend to the cheerful

notes of chickadees.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  As the woods grow more silent

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024