A hundred crows in a great rambling flock.

Fresh election-cake with peppered surface

October 29.

Carried my owl to the hill again. Had to shake him out of the box, for he did not go of his own accord. There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, with his horns pricked up and looking toward me. In this strong light the pupils of his eyes suddenly. contracted and the iris expanded till they were two great brazen orbs with a centre spot merely. His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything. I was obliged to toss him up a little that he might feel his wings, and then he flapped away low and heavily to a hickory on the hillside twenty rods off. ...

I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders. 

Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. 

There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pines there, and also very regular higher hemispherical ones with a regularly warted or peppered surface.

As I pass Merrick’s pasture, I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. The scent of their decay is pleasant to me. 

I buy no lot in the cemetery which my townsmen have just consecrated with a poem and an auction, paying so much for a choice. Here is room enough for me.

The swamp white oak has a fine, firm, leathery leaf with a silver under side, half of them now turned up. Oaks are now fairly brown; very few still red. 

Returning, I scare up a blue heron from the bathing rock this side the Island. It is whitened by its droppings, in great splotches a foot or more wide. He has evidently frequented it to watch for fish there.

Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1855

My owl. See October 28, 1855 ("Sealing squietly up behind the hemlock, though from the windward, I look carefully around it, and, to my surprise, see the owl still sitting there. So I spring round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and catch it in my hand."). See also A Book of the Seasons, , by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl


Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. See October 11, 1856 ("A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it. ")' See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.  See October 29, 1857 ("A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing."); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")

The cemetery which my townsmen have just consecrated. See note to October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery,")

Election cake toadstools. See October 20, 1856 ("Amid the young pitch pines . . . a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi . . .”); July 29, 1853 (“ . . .small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake  . .”). See also Concord: A Sense of Place, October 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

Election Cake dates back to Colonial America and the young Republic.  Bakers made this “muster" cake to feed militia members in the Colonial era during military training days. After the American Revolution, it evolved into an Election Cake, one prepared for town hall meetings and community celebrations to encourage eligible voter attendance.  ~ owl bakery

I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. See  October 16, 1857 ("How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. "); October 20, 1853 ("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.").

When the leaves fall

I love to wander and muse 

here is room for me.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A hundred crows in a great rambling flock.

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

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