A Passage to New York

The Commonwealth

October 24.

I spent the afternoon of Friday*(it seems some months ago) in Worcester, but failed to see Blake, he having "gone to the horse-race" in Boston; to atone for which I have just received a letter from him, asking me to stop at Worcester and lecture on my return. 

I called on  Brown and Higginson; in the evening came by way of Norwich to New York in the steamer Commonwealth, and, though it was so windy inland, had a perfectly smooth passage, and about as good a sleep as usually at home.

H. D. Thoreau, to Sophia, *[October 24, 1856]

The common trees of New Jersey

October 27. 

Monday. Began to survey along the shore and through the woods. One of the largest and commonest trees, the tulip, in the moist ravines; its dried tulip-shaped relic of a flower, the broad flat stamens still remaining. Noticed a medicinal odor, somewhat like fever-bush, in the bark of twigs. It is said to be a valuable tonic. 

The liquidambar or sweet-gum trees, very common and large, oak-like. The corky bark on young trees and twigs was raised into two ears, so as to form a channel, which would conduct the rain down the branches to the main stem, I should say. The fruit was a coarse, rigid, spherical bur, an inch or more in diameter, which opened and dropped much fine seed in my trunk. 

Black walnut and bayberry were pretty common, though I noticed no berries on the last.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1856

The plants of New Jersey

October 26. 

Sunday. An abundance of a viburnum, making thickets in dry woods and ravines and set out about houses, now full of edible fruit like that of V. nudum, and also of leaves. At first I was inclined to call it V. nudum, but beside that it bears an abundance of berries still, long after the V. nudum berries have fallen with us (and they hold on for three or four weeks afterward at least), it grows generally in dry woods and ravines and uplands; the leaf is quite thin, now reddened, of various forms; and the bush is quite thorny (!), in the woods making almost impenetrable thickets in many places, like a thorn bush, and gave me much trouble to cut through in surveying, as did the cat-briar. 

I think it must be the V. prunifolium, or black haw. It is quite ornamental, with its abundance of purple fruit, which tastes much like dates. I think I have never seen it in Concord, and perhaps Emerson and others confounded it with V. nudum. It is thorny like a wild apple, but of course much more slender. The privet was a very common shrub, with its black berries. Flowers almost entirely done. 

See apparently the seaside goldenrod, lingering still by the Raritan River, and a new aster. 

The persimmon (Diospyros Virginiana) quite common. Saw some trees quite full of fruit. There was a little left on the trees when I left, November 24th, but I should think it was in its prime about the end of the first week of November, i. e., what would readily shake off. Before, it was commonly puckery. In any case it furs the mouth just like the choke-cherry. It is not good for much. They would be more edible if it were not for the numerous large seeds, and when you have rejected them there is little but skin left. Yet I was surprised that the fruit was not more generally gathered. 

The sassafras was common. Saw and heard a katydid about the 1st of November.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1856

At Barnum's Museum,

October 25. 

Saw, at Barnum's Museum, the stuffed skin of a cougar that was found floating dead in the Hudson many years ago. The stuffed jaguar there looks rather the largest. 

Had seen a clergyman in Worcester the previous afternoon (at Higginson's) who told me of one killed near the head of the Delaware, in New York State, by an acquaintance of his. His dog had treed it or found it on a tree on a mountain side, and the hunter first saw it as he came up from below, stretched out on a limb and looking intently at him, ready to spring. He fired and wounded it, but, as usual, it sprang as soon as struck, in the direction it was pointing. It struck seventy feet down the mountain from the tree, or a hundred feet distant, tearing off the sleeve of the hunter's very thick and stout coat, as it passed, and marking his arm from shoulder to hand. It took to a tree, and again, and this time approaching it from above, he shot it. 

The specimens I have seen were long-bodied. 

Arrived at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, Saturday, 5 p. m., October 25th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 25, 1856

About the last of October

If, about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of our town, and probably of yours, and look over the forest, you may see


 -- well, what I have endeavored to describe.

October 23, 2016

All this you surely will see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, -- if you look for it.

Otherwise, regular and universal as this phenomenon is, whether you stand on the hilltop or in the hollow, you will think for threescore years and ten that all the wood is, at this season, sere and brown.

Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives.


The gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine.

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, — not a grain more.

The actual objects which one man will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the beholders are different. The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth.

We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads, — and then we can hardly see anything else.

In my botanical rambles I find that, first, the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may seem very foreign to this locality, — no nearer than Hudson's Bay, — and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it, and expecting it, unconsciously, and at length I surely see it. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.

A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the study of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He, as it were, tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk, or at most sees only their shadows. 

I have found that it required a different intention of the eye, in the same locality, to see different plants, even when they were closely allied, as Juncaceae and Gramineae: when I was looking for the former, I did not see the latter in the midst of them. 

How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!

He would stand a very small chance, if he fired at random into the sky, being told that snipes were flying there. 

And so is it with him that shoots at beauty; though he wait till the sky falls, he will not bag any, if he does not already know its seasons and haunts, and the color of its wing, — if he has not dreamed of it, so that he can anticipate it; then, indeed, he flushes it at every step, shoots double and on the wing, with both barrels, even in corn-fields. 

The true sportsman can shoot you almost any of his game from his windows: what else has he windows or eyes for? It comes and perches at last on the barrel of his gun; but the rest of the world never see it with the feathers on.

H. D. Thoreau, Autumnal Tints (1862) 

See November 4, 1858 ("The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different. The scarlet oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth. We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else.")
See also July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”);  September 9, 1858 (“It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants, as, for example, Juncaceoa and Gramineoe; even; i. e., I find that when I am looking for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst. How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He as it were tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk.”);  November 2, 1858 ("Consider the beauty of the earth, and not merely of a few impounded herbs? However, you will not see these splendors, whether you stand on the hilltop or in the hollow, unless you are prepared to see them. The gardener can see only the gardener’s garden, wherever he goes. The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation.") November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives.. . . We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); February 25, 1859 ("All the criticism which I got on my lecture on Autumnal Tints at Worcester on the 22d was that I assumed that my audience had not seen so much of them as they had. But after reading it I am more than ever convinced that they have not seen much of them, — that there are very few persons who do see much of nature.")

Also January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. . . .He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be.”) August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.)

April 8, 1856 ("Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.”); September 24, 1859 (“ A man must attend to Nature closely for many years to know when, as well as where, to look for his objects, since he must always anticipate her a little. . . . I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sportsman knows when to look for plover").

Had a chat with Minott how they used to carry on.

October 21. 

A very warm Indian-summer day, too warm for a thick coat. 

It is remarkably hazy, too, but when I open the door I smell smoke, which may in part account for it. After being out awhile I do not perceive the smoke, only on first opening the door. 

It is so thick a blue haze that, when, going along in Thrush Alley Path, I look through the trees into Abel Brooks's deep hollow, I cannot see across it to the woods beyond, though it is only a stone's throw. Like a deep blue lake at first glance. 

Had a chat with Minott, sitting on a log by his door. He says he began to carry a gun when he was fifteen or sixteen years old; afterward he owned three at one time, one training-piece and two fowling-pieces. He lived at James Baker's seven years; not till after he was of age. He used to range all over that neighborhood, away down into Lexington, and knew every stone and stump; used to go chestnutting about Flint's Pond, and a-fishing there, too. The fish and fowl were ten times as plenty as they are now. Why, he has been along the ridges (the moraines toward Ditch Pond) when, the ducks rising up on each side, the sky was black with them. 

His training-piece was an old king's-arm, taken from the British some time, he supposed. It was a capital piece, even for shot, and thoroughly made, made upon honor every part of it. There are no such guns made in this country. The lock was strong and smart, so that when you snapped it, it filled the pan chock-full of fire, and he could burn a single kernel of powder in it. But it took a good deal of powder to load it. He kept its brass mountings burnished so bright that you could see your face in them. He had also owned a French piece. 

Once, too, he had a little English cocking-piece, i. e. fowling-piece. It had the word " London " on the barrel close to the lock. It was a plaguy smart piece, bell-muzzled, and would carry ball well. He could knock over a robin with it eight rods off with ball or a slug. He had a rifle once. What did they use rifles for? Oh, for turkey-shooting. Once, one with his English fowling-piece. He saw many on the road going to it. Saw Dakin and Jonas Minott (Captain Minott's son, who spent quite a fortune on shooting), one offering to take another down to the shooting for a mug of flip. They asked him what he was going to do with that little thing. You paid fourpence a shot at a live turkey only twenty rods off. Those who had rifles were not allowed to rest. 

Amos Baker was there (who was at Concord Fight). The turkey was a large white one. Minott rammed down his slug and, getting down behind a fence, rested on it while the rest laughed at him. He told Amos to look sharp and tell him where his ball struck, and fired. Amos said the ball struck just above the turkey. Others were firing in the mean while. Minott loaded and tried once more, and this time his ball cut off the turkey's neck, and it was his; worth a dollar, at least. You only had to draw blood to get the turkey. Another, a black one, was set up, and this time his ball struck the ground just this side the turkey, then scaled up and passed right through its body, lodging under the skin on the opposite side, and he cut it out.

Rice made his money chiefly by his liquor, etc. Some set up the turkeys they had gained: others "hustled" for liquor or for a supper; i. e., they would take sides and then, putting seven coppers in a hat, shake them up well and empty them, and the party that got the fewest heads after three casts paid for the supper. 

Told me how they used to carry on, on Concord Common formerly, on great days. Once, when they were shaking dice there in the evening for money, round a table with twenty-five or thirty dollars in cash upon it, some rogue fastened a rope to one leg of the table, and so at a distance suddenly started off with the table, at the same time upsetting and extinguishing the light. This made a great outcry. They ran up crying, "Mister, I 'll help you pick up your money," but they put the half into their own pockets. 

Father told me about his father the other night, — that he remembers his father used to breakfast before the family at one time, on account of his business, and he with him. His father used to eat the under crusts of biscuits, and he the upper. His father died in 1801, aged forty-seven. When the war came on, he was apprentice or journeyman to a cooper who employed many hands. He called them together, and told them that on account of the war his business was ruined and he had no more work for them. So, my father thinks, his father went privateering. Yet he remembers his telling him of his being employed digging at some defenses, when a cannon-ball came and sprinkled the sand all over them. 

After the war he went into business as a merchant, commencing with a single hogshead of sugar. His shop was on Long Wharf. He was a short man, a little taller than my father, stout and very strong for his size. Levi Melchier, a powerful man, who was his clerk or tender, used to tell my father that he did not believe he was so strong a man as his father was. He would never give in to him in handling a hogshead of molasses, — setting it on its head, or the like. 

Minott, too, sings the praises of Beatton, the store keeper, though of course he does not remember him. He was a Scotchman and a peddler, and the most honest man that is mentioned in Concord history. You might send a child to the store, and if there was a fraction still due the child after making change, he would give him a needle or a large pin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1856

Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch

October 20. 

October 20.

P. M. — To Hill, to look for ground squirrel nests.

The river-banks have now assumed almost their November aspect. The button-bushes are nearly bare. The water is smooth, the sun warm, and the reflections particularly fine and distinct; but there are reflected now, for the most part, only gray twigs and a few sere and curled brown leaves, wool-grass, etc. 

Land at Hemlocks, in the eddy there, where the white bits of sawdust keep boiling up and down and whirling round as in a pot. 

Amid the young pitch pines in the pasture behind I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter. Some of those spread chocolate-colored ones have many grubs in them, though dry and dusty. 

Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter (began to have a fire, more or less, say ten days or a fortnight ago), we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs. 

Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Beckii nor Polygonum amphibium to my knowledge this year, nor have I found any myrio- phyllum. 

I dig into two or three squirrel-holes under a black oak, and in a rotten stump trace them a foot or more and lose them, or else they come to an end? Though I saw a squirrel enter the ground, I dug and lost it. They are apparently very busy now laying up their stores. I see a gray one making haste with waving tail across the field from the nut trees to the woods. 

Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line.

I think that all spiders can walk on water, for when, last summer, I knocked one off my boat by chance, he ran swiftly back to the boat and climbed up, as if more to avoid the fishes than the water. This would account for those long lines stretched low over the water from one grass stem to another. I see one of them now five or six feet long and only three or four inches above the surface, and it is remarkable that there is no perceptible sag to it, weak as the line must be. 

The pin-weeds are now bare, and their stem and fruit turned a dark brown. 

The thorns on the hill are all bare. 

There are fewer turtles, now and for some time, out sunning. A very little Solidago nemoralis in one place from the axil. 

I hear from my chamber the note of myrtle-birds [White-throat sparrow] mingled with sparrows, in the yard, especially in the morning, quite like a clear, sweet squeaking wheel barrow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1856

A great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi.  See October 20, 1857 ("I see the yellowish election-cake fungi."); See also  October 29, 1855 ("There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pine”); July 29, 1853 (“ . . .small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake atop,. . .”). See also Concord: A Sense of Place, Octoberr 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

 Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . . the nuthatch is heard again. See November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch . . .a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. ...”); December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.([but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59).)”) Compare July 12, 1860 ("Hear a nuthatch in the street. So they breed here."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

Walking through the reddened huckleberry bushes, I notice birds' nests already filling with withered leaves.

October 19. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

The fall, now and for some weeks, is the time for flocks of sparrows of various kinds flitting from bush to bush and tree to tree — and both bushes and trees are thinly leaved or bare — and from one seared meadow to another. They are mingled together, and their notes, even, being faint, are, as well as their colors and motions, much alike. The sparrow youth are on the wing. They are still further concealed by their resemblance in color to the gray twigs and stems, which are now beginning to be bare. I have not noticed any kind of blackbird for a long time. 

The most prominent of the few lingering solidagos which I have noticed since the 8th is the S. caesia, though that is very scarce indeed now, hardly survives at all. 

Of the asters which I have noticed since that date, the A. undulatus is, perhaps, the only one of which you can find a respectable specimen. I see one so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it. 

Of lingering flowers which I have noticed during the last three or four days (vide list under 16th), not including fringed gentian and witch-hazel, the freshest, and at same time commonest, is the yarrow. 

I noticed, two or three days ago, after one of those frosty mornings, half an hour before sunset of a clear and pleasant day, a swarm, — were they not of winter gnats ? — between me and the sun like so many motes, seven or eight feet from the ground, by the side of a young cherry tree in the yard. The swarm was some three feet in diameter and seemed to have been revealed by the level rays of the sun. Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter? 

I go across Hubbard's land and find that I must go round the corners of two or three new winter-rye fields, which show very green by contrast with the seared grass. 

I sit on the old Conantum door-step, where the wind rattles the loose clapboards above my head, though for the most part only the horizontal rows of wrought nails are left to show where the clap boards have been. It is affecting to behold a peach and apple orchard just come to maturity by the side of this house, which was planted since this house was an uninhabited ruin, as if the first step would have been to pull down the house. 

See quite a flock of myrtle-birds, — which I might carelessly have mistaken for slate-colored snowbirds, — flitting about on the rocky hillside under Conantum Cliff. They show about three white or light-colored spots when they fly, commonly no bright yellow, though some are pretty bright. They perch on the side of the dead mulleins, on rocks, on the ground, and directly dart off apparently in pursuit of some insect. I hear no note from them. They are thus near or on the ground, then, not as in spring. 

Both the white and black ash are quite bare, and some of the elms there. The bass has lost, apparently, more than half its leaves. 

The Botrychium lunarioides, now shedding its pale whitish dust when struck by the foot, but apparently generally a little past its maturity, is quite common in the pasture near the wall where I sat to watch the eagle. 

At first you notice only the stipe, four to seven or eight inches high, like a narrow hand partly closed, for the small (now dull-purplish) frond unites with it below the surface. 

Walking through the reddened huckleberry bushes, whose leaves are fast falling, I notice the birds' nests already filling with withered leaves. 

Witch-hazel in bloom
October 19, 2018

Witch-hazel is in prime, or probably a little past, though some buds are not yet open. Their leaves are all gone. They form large clumps on the hillside there, even thirty to fifty stems from one to two or three inches in diameter and the highest twelve feet high, falling over on every side. The now imbrowned ferns around indicate the moist soil which they like. 

I have often noticed the inquisitiveness of birds, as the other day of a sparrow, whose motions I should not have supposed to have any reference to me, if I had not watched it from first to last. 

I stood on the edge of a pine and birch wood. It flitted from seven or eight rods distant to a pine within a rod of me, where it hopped about stealthily and chirped awhile, then flew as many rods the other side and hopped about there a spell, then back to the pine again, as near me as it dared, and again to its first position, very restless all the while. Generally I should have supposed that there was more than one bird, or that it was altogether accidental, — that the chipping of this sparrow eight or ten rods [away] had no reference to me, — for I could see nothing peculiar about it. But when I brought my glass to bear on it, I found that it was almost steadily eying me and was all alive with excitement. 

Pokeweed has been killed by the severe frosts of the last three or four days. 

The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting. They point at various I angles with the stem like a flourish. The pretty brown fishes have loosened and lifted their scales somewhat, are bristling a little. Or, further advanced, the outer part of the down of the upper seeds is blown loose, while they are still retained by the ends  of the middle portion in loops  attached to the core. These white tufts, ready to burst and take to flight on the least jar, show afar as big as your fist. There they dangle and flutter, till they are quite dry and the wind rises. Others again are open and empty, except of the brown core, and you see what a delicate smooth white (slightly cream-colored) lining this casket has. 

The hypericums — the whole plant — have now generally been killed by the frost. A large pasture thistle bud close to the ground amid its leaves, as in spring. Among the dirty woolly heads of plants now gone to seed, I notice for the first time the peculiar matted, woolly top of the tall anemone, rising above some red-leaved huckleberries. I am surprised to see to what length and breadth one of these little compact conical heads has puffed out. Here are five which have flown and matted together into a mass four or five inches long, perpendicularly, by two wide, full of seeds with their wool. 

Wachusett

I return by the west side of Lee's Cliff hill, and sit on a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles, amid the woods, whence I see Wachusett. How little unevenness and elevation is required for Nature's effects! An elevation one thousand or fifteen hundred feet above the plain is seen from all eminences and level open plains, as from over the opening made by a pond, within thirty miles. Nature is not obliged to lift her mountains very high in the horizon, after all, to make them visible and interesting. 

The rich sunny yellow of the old pitch pine needles, just ready to fall, contrasting with the new and unmixed masses above, makes a very pleasing impression, as I look down into the hollows this side of Lee's Cliff. 

I noticed the small woodpecker several days ago.

H. D. Thoreau , Journal, October 19, 1856

I ... sit on a rounded rock ... covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles, amid the woods, whence I see Wachusett. See October 19, 1854 ("To Westminster by cars; thence on foot to Wachusett Mountain, four miles to Foster’s, and two miles thence to mountain-top by road.....")

It is affecting to behold a peach and apple orchard just come to maturity by the side of this house, which was planted since this house was an uninhabited ruin.  See February 19, 1855 ("Conant was cutting up an old pear tree which had blown down by his old house on Conantum. This and others still standing. . . were set anciently with reference to a house which stood in the little peach orchard near by.”)

I see one so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it. See October 4, 1853 ("Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus, and gnats are dancing in the air."); October 6, 1858 (“The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path.")

Man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him.

October 18. 

aglow with yellow,
red, and green

Rain all night and half this day. 

P. M. — A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop. 

The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green. They are remarkable for the contrast they afford of deep blushing red on one half and green on the other. 

The chestnuts are not so ready to fall as I expected. Perhaps the burs require to be dried now after the rain. In a day or two they will nearly all come down. They are a pretty fruit, thus compactly stowed away in this bristly chest, — three is the regular number, and there is no room to spare, — the two outside nuts having each one convex side without and a flat side within; the middle nut has two flat sides. Sometimes there are several more nuts in a bur, but this year the burs are small, and there are not commonly more than two good nuts, very often only one, the middle one, both sides of which will then be convex, each way bulging out into a thin abortive mere reminiscence of a nut, all shell, beyond it. 

It is a rich sight, that of a large chestnut tree with a dome-shaped top, where the yellowing leaves have become thin, — for most now strew the ground evenly as a carpet throughout the chestnut woods and so save some seed, — all richly rough with great brown burs, which are opened into several segments so as to show the wholesome-colored nuts peeping forth, ready to fall on the slightest jar. 

The individual nuts are very interesting, of various forms, according to the season and the number in a bur. The base of each where it was joined to the bur is marked with an irregular dark figure on a light ground, oblong or crescent-shaped commonly, like a spider or other insect with a dozen legs, while the upper or small end tapers into a little white, woolly spire crowned with a star, and the whole upper slopes of the nuts are covered with the same hoary wool, which reminds you of the frosts on whose advent they peep forth. 

Each nut stretches forth a little starry hand at the end of a slender arm — and by this, when mature, you may pull it out without fear of prickles. Within this thick prickly bur the nuts are about as safe until they are quite mature, as a porcupine behind its spines. Yet I see where the squirrels have gnawed through many closed burs and left the pieces on the stumps. 

There are sometimes two meats within one chestnut shell, divided transversely, and each covered by its separate brown-ribbed skin.

The late goldenrod (S. latifolia) is all gone, on account of frost. 

Men commonly exaggerate the theme. Some themes they think are significant and others insignificant. I feel that my life is very homely, my pleasures very cheap. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed most words in the English language do not mean for me what they do for my neighbors. I see that my neighbors look with compassion on me, that they think it is a mean and unfortunate destiny which makes me to walk in these fields and woods so much and sail on this river alone.

But so long as I find here the only real elysium, I can not hesitate in my choice. My work is writing, and I do not hesitate, though I know that no subject is too trivial for me, tried by ordinary standards; for, ye fools, the theme is nothing, the life is everything. 

All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth, but the pyramid of our experience, or our interest in it, rests on us by a broader or narrower base. That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes.

I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside. 

What a strong medicinal but rich scent now after the rain, from decaying weeds, perhaps ferns, by the road side! The rain, falling on the fresh dried herbs and filling the ditches into which they drooped, has converted them into tea.

Apple leaves are now pretty generally brown and crisp. 

I see where the chestnut trees have been sadly bruised by the large stones cast against them in previous years and which still lie around. 

That was an interesting sight described on the 12th, the winged insects of various kinds gathered on the last fragment of a watermelon in the garden, to taste the last sweets of the year. In midsummer they are dispersed and not observed, but now, as in the spring, they are congregated about the little sweet that is left. 

Minott told me one of his hunting stories yesterday, how he saw a very large hen-hawk come sailing from over the hill, just this side of where Moore lives now. He didn't expect to reach her, but he knew that he had a plaguy smart little piece, — it was a kind of half- stocked one (he always speaks of the gun he used on a particular occasion as if it were a new one, describing it minutely, though he never had more than three, perhaps not more than two, in his life, I suspect), — so he thought he'd give her a try, and, faith, she pitched down into the little meadow on the north side the road there, and when he came up she bristled up to him so that he was obliged to give her another charge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1856

The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green. See October 18, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty.")
We touch our subject but by a point which has no breadth. . . . See June 6, 1857 (" Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone
and hue to my thought. . . . We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, . . .") December 11, 1855 ("I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery. The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. ”); January 26, 1852 ("The moment always spurs us. The spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life.")

I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside. See July 14, 1852 (" See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road like a mackerel fleet with their small hulls and great sails now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow in their zigzag flight, as when a fair wind calls schooners out of haven and disperses them over the broad ocean. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of the life excited. . . . That is, man is all in all, Nature nothing, but as she draws him out and reflects him. See May 24, 1857 ("We want no[t] completeness but intensity of life."); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love."); May 23, 1853 ("The poet must bring to Nature the smooth mirror in which she is to be reflected.”) May 10, 1853 ("I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant") August 7, 1853("The objects I behold correspond to my mood"); May 21, 1851 ("The existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts. Man, the crowning fact, the god we know. . . .The standing miracle to man is man."):

Some trees have dropped their leaves instantaneously, as at a signal.

October 17. 

Notice some of the fungus called spunk, very large, on the large white oak in Love Lane, eight or nine feet from the ground on the east side, on a protuberance where a limb was formerly cut off. It is now green and moist, of a yellowish color, composed of several flakes one above the other; the length of the shelf, or chord of the arc, twenty-one inches; depth from the tree, or width of shelf, about one foot. 

Frost has now within three or four days turned almost all flowers to woolly heads, — their November aspect. Fuzzy, woolly heads now reign along all hedge rows and over many broad fields. 

Some trees, as small hickories, appear to have dropped their leaves instantaneously, as at a signal, as a soldier grounds arms. The ground under such reflects a blaze of light from now crisped yellow leaves. Down they have come on all sides, as if touched by fairy fingers. 

Boys are raking leaves in the street, if only for the pleasure of dealing with such clean, crisp substances.

Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye. Each leaf, still crisply curled up on its edges, makes as yet a tight boat like the Indian's hide one, but ere long it will be come relaxed and flatted out and sink to the bottom, i. e. if it is driven out to sea, but most are drifted toward the shore, which is converted into one long, crowded haven where the water is concealed, and they settle close to land.

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! ! 

It would be too late to look for bees now at Wyman's; the flowers are too far gone. 

I go down the path through Charles Bartlett's land. The young white oak leaves are now generally withered in and on the sides of the hollows there, also the black scrub, while the red and black oaks are still commonly red and so far alive. 

As I stand looking at Emerson's bound under the railroad embankment, I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge. They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 17, 1856

Some trees, . . have dropped their leaves instantaneously, as at a signal, . . .The ground under such reflects a blaze of light from now crisped yellow leaves. See October 15, 1853 ("They suddenly form thick beds . . . just the size and form of the tree above.")

Countless leafy skiffs . . . concealing the water quite from foot and eye. See 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 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it, —fleets of dry boats . . ."); October 12, 1858 ("There are many maple, birch, etc., leaves on the Assabet, in stiller places along the shore, but not yet a leaf harvest"); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish."); October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet. . ."); ;October 17, 1857 ("The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them. "); October 17, 1858 ("They remind me of ditches in swamps, whose surfaces are often quite concealed by leaves now. The waves made by my boat cause them to rustle, "); October 19, 1853 ("The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore, and rustle pleasantly when the wave which the boat creates strikes them."); October 22, 1853 ("this great fleet of scattered leaf boats, still tight and dry, each one curled up on every side by the sun's skill,"); November 1, 1852("On the river this afternoon, the leaves, now crisp and curled, when the wind blows them on to the water become rude boats which float and sail about awhile conspicuously before they go to the bottom.")

Fall flowers and a fetid fungus.

October 16.

October 16.

Ground all white with frost. 

P. M. — To chestnuts, down Turnpike. 

I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, i. e. a few of them: hedge-mustard, mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow, some Aster Tradescanti, and some red clover.  

Polygonum orientate was finished by yesterday's frost. There was plenty of the front-rank polygonum freshly open along river on the 13th. Perhaps the frosts have nipped it. 

I saw a farmer busily collecting his pumpkins on the 14th, — Abel Brooks, — rambling over his corn-fields and bringing the pumpkins out to the sides on the path, on the side of the field, where he can load them. The ground was so stiff on the 15th, in the morning, that some could not dig potatoes. 

Bent is now making haste to gather his apples. I. Wright, too, is collecting some choice barrels of golden russets. Many times he turns it over before he leaves out a specked one. A poor story if the farmer cannot get rich, for everything he has is salable, even every load of mud on his farm. 

At the Everett meadow a large flock of mewing and lisping goldfinches, with but little yellow, pass over the Turnpike. 

Many chestnut burs are now open, yet a stone will not jar down many nuts yet. Burs which were quite green on the 8th are now all brown and dry, and the prickles come off in your hand when you touch them, yet the nuts do not readily drop out. Many nuts have fallen within two or three days, but many squirrels have been busily picking them up. 

Found amid the sphagnum on the dry bank on the south side of the Turnpike, just below Everett's meadow, a rare and remarkable fungus, such as I have heard of but never seen before. The whole height six and three quarters inches, two thirds of it being buried in the sphagnum. It may be divided into three parts, pileus, stem, and base, — or scrotum, for it is a perfect phallus. 

One of those fungi named impudicus, I think. This is very similar to if not the same with that represented in Loudon's Encyclopedia and called "Phallus impudicus, Stinking Morel, very fetid." In all respects a most disgusting object, yet very suggestive. 

It is hollow from top to bottom, the form of the hollow answering to that of the outside. The color of the outside white excepting the pileus, which is olive-colored and somewhat coarsely corrugated, with an oblong mouth at tip about one eighth of an inch long, or, measuring the white lips, half an inch. This cap is thin and white within, about one and three eighths inches high by one and a half wide. The stem (bare portion) is three inches long (tapering more rapidly than in the drawing), horizontally viewed of an oval form. Longest diameter at base one and a half inches, at top (on edge of pileus) fifteen sixteenths of an inch. Short diameters in both cases about two thirds as much. It is a delicate white cylinder of a finely honeycombed and crispy material about three sixteenths of an inch thick, or more, the whole very straight and regular. The base, or scrotum, is of an irregular bag form, about one inch by two in the extremes, consisting of a thick trembling gelatinous mass surrounding the bottom of the stem and covered with a tough white skin of a darker tint than the stem. The whole plant rather frail and trembling. There was at first a very thin delicate white collar (or volva?) about the base of the stem above the scrotum. 

In all respects a

most disgusting object, yet 

very suggestive. 

It was as offensive to the eye as to the scent, the cap rapidly melting and defiling what it touched with a fetid, olivaceous, semiliquid matter. In an hour or two the plant scented the whole house wherever placed, so that it could not be endured. I was afraid to sleep in my chamber where it had lain until the room had been well ventilated. It smelled like a dead rat in the ceiling, in all the ceilings of the house. 

Pray, what was Nature thinking of when she made this ? She almost puts her self on a level with those who draw in privies. 

The cap had at first a smooth and almost dry surface, of a sort of olive slate-color, but the next day this colored surface all melted out, leaving deep corrugations or gills — rather honeycomb-like cells — with a white bottom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1856

Burs which were quite green on the 8th are now all brown and dry . . .many squirrels have been busily picking them up. See October 8, 1856 ("A few chestnut burs are open, and have been some days, before they could have felt frost, showing that they would open without it, but a stone will not jar them down, nor a club thrown into the tree yet.. . ."); December 9, 1852 ("The chestnuts are almost as plenty as ever, . . .. There are more this year than the squirrels can consume.. . .")

The chickadees resume their winter ways before the winter comes.

October 15. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

A smart frost, which even injured plants in house. Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen. 

October 15, 2016

River lower than for some months. Banks begin to wear almost a Novemberish aspect. The black willow almost completely bare; many quite so. It loses its leaves about same time with the maples. 

The large ferns are now rapidly losing their leaves except the terminal tuft. Other species about the edges of swamps were turned suddenly dark cinnamon-color by the frost of yesterday. 

The water is very calm and full of reflections. Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet, leaves which apparently came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. Every motion of the turtles is betrayed by their rustling now.

Mikania is all whitish woolly now. Yet many tortoises are still out in the sun. 

An abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at V. Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year for berries. Even this, too, is abundant like the rest. They are tender and more palatable than ever now. I find a little pile of them, maybe fifteen or twenty, on the moss with each a little indentation or two on it, made apparently by some bird or beast. 

The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes. 

A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1856

Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost.  See October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”);  October22,1854 (“Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets.”); October 15, 1857 (“There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather. . .”)

The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes. See October 15, 1859 (The chickadees sing as if at home. They are not travelling singers hired by any Barnum. Theirs is an honest, homely, heartfelt melody.""). See also  October 11, 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 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winterish.”); October 17, 1856 (" I heard a smart tche-day-day-day close to my ear, and, looking up, see four of these birds, which had come to scrape acquaintance with me, hopping amid the alders within three and four feet of me. I had heard them further off at first, and they had followed me along the hedge. They day-day 'd and lisp their faint notes alternately, and then, as if to make me think they had some other errand than to peer at me, they peck the dead twigs with their bills — the little top-heavy, black-crowned, volatile fellows."); November 9, 1850 ("The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note.”); December 1, 1853 (“[T]he little chickadees . . . inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.”)


A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen. See October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”)

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet.

October 14, 2016

October 14. 

A sudden change in the weather after remarkably warm and pleasant weather. Rained in the night, and finger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets. 

Leaves are fast falling, and they are already past their brightness, perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. [No.]

P. M. — To Hubbard's Close. 

Huckleberries perfectly plump and fresh on the often bare bushes (always (else) red-leaved). The bare gray twigs begin to show, the leaves fast falling. 

The maples are nearly bare. The leaves of red maples, still bright, strew the ground, often crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, just like some apples. 

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. 

October 14, 2018

Going to Laurel Glen in the hollow beyond Deep Cut Woods, I see now withered erechthites and epilobium standing thick on the bare hillside, where the hemlocks were cut, exposing the earth, though no fire has been there. They seem to require only that the earth shall be laid bare for them. 

In Laurel Glen, an aspen sprout which has grown seven to eight feet high, its lower and larger leaves, already fallen and blackened (a dark slate), about. One green and perfect leaf measures ten inches in length and nine broad, heart-shaped. Others, less perfect, are half an inch or more larger each way. 

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1856

Leaves are fast falling . . . perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. See October 14, 1860 ("This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing.")

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. See October 12, 1852 ("A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods. . . ."); October 13, 1855 ("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."); October 15 1858 ("White pines are in the midst of their fall");  October 16, 1855 ("How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground! quite like a carpet.") See also The October Pine Fall

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones . . . See October 20, 1852 (" . . .tansy . . ."); October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out."); October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression."); October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us."); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").