The scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous.

October 21.

It began to rain about 10 o’clock last evening after a cloudy day, and it still rains, gently but steadily, this morning. 

The wind must be east, for I hear the church bell very plainly; yet I sit with an open window, it is so warm. 

Looking into the yard, I see the currant bushes all bare of leaves, as they have been some time; but the gooseberries at the end of their row are covered with reddened leaves. This gradualness in the changing and falling of the leaves produces agreeable effects and contrasts. 

The currant row is bare, but the gooseberries at the end are full of scarlet leaves still.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A damp cloudy day only, after all, and scarcely any rain; a good day for all hunters to be out, especially on the water. 

The yellowish leaves of the black oak incline soon to a decayed and brown look. The red oak is more red. 

But the scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! They look somewhat like double or treble crosses.

Almost all wild apples are handsome. Some are knurly and peppered all over or on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a yellowish-white ground; others have crimson blotches or eyes, more or less confluent and fiery when wet, for apples, like shells and pebbles, are handsomest in a wet day. Taken from under the tree on the damp sward, they shrivel and fade. Some have these spots beneath a reddened surface with obscure rays. Others have hundreds of fine blood-red rays, running regularly, though broken, from the stem dimple to the blossom, like meridian lines, on a straw-colored ground, perfect spheres. Others are a deep, dark red, with very obscure yet darker rays; others a uniform clear, bright red, approaching to scarlet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1855

The wind must be east, for I hear the church bell very plainly. See May 3, 1852 ("The clock strikes distinctly, showing the wind is easterly."); April 18, 1852 ("An east wind. I hear the clock strike plainly ten or eleven P.M.") and An East Wind.

The scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points.   See October 15, 1858 ("If you stand fronting a hillside covered with a variety of young oaks, the brightest scarlet ones, uniformly deep, dark scarlet, will be the scarlet oaks"); October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory."); October 26, 1858 ("The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later"); October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); October 30, 1858 ("The scarlet oak . . . retains some brightness to the middle of November. ");  October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness;"); November 1, 1858 ("If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed."); November 4, 1858 ("The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth.")