Some aspens are a very fair yellow now, and trembling as in summer.

October. 14. 

October 14, 2022

P. M. — To White Pond. 

Another, the tenth of these memorable days. 

We have had some fog the last two or three nights, and this forenoon it was slow to disperse, dog-day-like, but this afternoon it is warmer even than yesterday. I should like it better if it were not so warm. I am glad to reach the shade of Hubbard’s Grove; the coolness is refreshing. 

It is indeed a golden autumn. 

These ten days are enough to make the reputation of any climate. A tradition of these days might be handed down to posterity. They deserve a notice in history, in the history of Concord. All kinds of crudities have a chance to get ripe this year. Was there ever such an autumn? 

And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sand-banks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines. You may run upon them as much as you please,—even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content. You may see them on change any warmer hour. In these banks, too, and such as these, are my funds deposited, a fund of health and enjoyment. Their (the crickets) prosperity and happiness and, I trust, mine do not depend on whether the New York banks suspend or no. We do not rely on such slender security as the thin paper of the Suffolk Bank. To put your trust in such a bank is to be swallowed up and undergo suffocation. Invest, I say, in these country banks. Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. Withered goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis) is no failure, like a broken bank, and yet in its most golden season nobody counterfeits it. Nature needs no counterfeit-detector. I have no compassion for, nor sympathy with, this miserable state of things. Banks built of granite, after some Grecian or Roman style, with their porticoes and their safes of iron, are not so permanent, and cannot give me so good security for capital invested in them, as the heads of withered hardhack in the meadow. I do not suspect the solvency of these. I know who is their president and cashier. 

I take all these walks to every point of the compass, and it is always harvest-time with me. I am always gathering my crop from these woods and fields and waters, and no man is in my way or interferes with me. My crop is not their crop. To-day I see them gathering in their beans and corn, and they are a spectacle to me, but are soon out of my sight. I am not gathering beans and corn. Do they think there are no fruits but such as these ? I am a reaper; I am not a gleaner. I go reaping, cutting as broad a swath as I can, and bundling and stacking up and carrying it off from field to field, and no man knows nor cares. My crop is not sorghum nor Davis seedlings. There are other crops than these, whose seed is not distributed by the Patent Office. I go abroad over the land each day to get the best I can find, and that is never carted off even to the last day of November, and I do not go as a gleaner.

The farmer has always come to the field after some material thing; that is not what a philosopher goes there for. 

I see, in Hubbard's Grove, a large black birch at the very height of its change. Its leaves a clear, rich yellow; many strew the ground. 

Near by is a tupelo which is all a distinct yellow with a little green. 

Within a couple of rods a single hyla peeps interruptedly, bird like.

Large oaks appear to be now generally turned or turning. The white, most conspicuous in sunny places, say a reddish salmon; began to change at lower limbs. Black oaks a brownish yellow. These large trees are not brilliant. 

On the causeway I pass by maples here and there which are bare and smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing; but there it lies, nearly as bright as ever, on one side on the ground, making neanly as regular a figure as lately on the tree. I should rather say that I first observed the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent colored and substantial shadow, and they alone suggested to look for the trees that had borne them. They preserve these bright colors on the ground but a short time, a day or so, especially if it rains. 

I see a large flock of grackles, probably young birds, quite near me on William Wheeler's apple trees, pruning themselves and trying to sing. They never succeed; make a sort of musical spluttering. Most, I think, have brownish heads and necks, and some purple reflections from their black bodies. 

There is a very little gossamer, mostly blowing off in large loops from the south side the bridge, the loose end having caught. I also see it here and there stretched across lanes from side to side, as high as my face. 

Sat in the old pasture beyond the Corner Spring Woods to look at that pine wood now at the height of its change, pitch and white. Their change produces a very singular and pleasing effect. They are regularly parti-colored. The last year's leaves, about a foot beneath the extremities of the twigs on all sides, now changed and ready to fall, have their period of brightness as well as broader leaves. They are a clear yellow, contrasting with the fresh and liquid green of the termi nal plumes, or this year's leaves. These two quite distinct colors are thus regularly and equally distributed over the whole tree. You have the warmth of the yellow and the coolness of the green. So it should be with our own maturity, not yellow to the very extremity of our shoots, but youthful and untried green ever putting forth afresh at the extremities, foretelling a maturity as yet unknown. The ripe leaves fall to the ground and become nutriment for the green ones, which still aspire to heaven. In the fall of the leaf, there is no fruit, there is no true maturity, neither in our science and wisdom. 

Some aspens are a very fair yellow now, and trembling as in summer. I think it is they I see a mile off on Bear Garden Hill, amid the oaks and pines. 

There is a very thick haze this afternoon and almost a furnace-like heat. I cannot see far toward the sun through it. 

Approaching White Pond by the path, I see on its perfectly smooth surface what I at first mistake for a large raft of dead and black logs and limbs, but it soon elevates itself in the form of a large flock of black ducks, which go off with a loud quacking. 

This, as other ponds now, when it is still, has a fine sparkle from skaters on it. I go along near the shore in the woods to the hill recently cleared on the east side. The clethra as an under-bush has an exceedingly pale yellow leaf. The nemopanthes on the hill side is like the amelanchier, yellowish with consider able ruddiness; the total effect is russet. 

Looking now toward the north side of the pond, I perceive that the reflection of the hillside seen from an opposite hill is not so broad as the hillside itself appears, owing to the different angle at which it is seen. The reflection exhibits such an aspect of the hill, apparently, as you would get if your eye were placed at that part of the surface of the pond where the reflection seems to be. 

In this instance, too, then, Nature avoids repeating herself. 

Not even reflections in still water are like their substances as seen by us. This, too, accounts for my seeing portions of the sky through the trees in reflections often when none appear in the substance. Is the reflection of a hillside, however, such an aspect of it as can be obtained by the eye directed to the hill itself from any single point of view? It plainly is not such a view as the eye would get looking upward from the immediate base of the hill or water's edge, for there the first rank of bushes on the lower part of the hill would conceal the upper. The reflection of the top appears to be such a view of it as I should get with my eye at the water's edge above the edge of the reflection; but would the lower part of the hill also appear from this point as it does in the reflection? Should I see as much of the undersides of the leaves there? If not, then the reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo. 

I doubt if you can ever get Nature to repeat herself exactly. 

The occasional dimples on this pure sheeny surface in which the sky is reflected make you suspect as soon some mote fallen from the sky as risen from beneath, to disturb it. 

Next to the scarlet, methinks the white shrub oaks make, or have made, the most brilliant show at a distance on hillsides. The latter is not very bright, unless seen between you and the sun, but there its abundant inward color is apparent. 

At the head of the path by the pond, I saw a red squirrel, only a rod off in a white pine, eating a toadstool. It was a slightly convex white disk, (then) two inches in diameter. I saw where he had bitten off its white stump within a few feet of the base of the tree. I should not have called it an edible one; but he knows. He held it vertically with a paw on each side and what had been the lower side toward him, and was nibbling off the inside edge very fast, turning it round from time to time and letting some fragments drop, pausing to look at me. As a boy might nibble a biscuit. Are nuts scarce? I think it was not the edible one; was too big. 

Veronica serpyllifolia in bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1857

The reflection of the top appears to be such a view of it as I should get with my eye at the water's edge. . .See November 23, 1853 ("You see the reflections of the humblest weeds against the sky, but you cannot put your head low enough to see the substance so. The reflection enchants us, just as an echo does.");  December 8, 1853 (“I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside.”); December 9, 1856 ("I perceive that more or other things are seen in the reflection than in the substance.");November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”)

The reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo. See October 12, 1851 ("The echo is to some extent an independent sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it.")

I first observed the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent colored and substantial shadow, and they alone suggested to look for the trees that had borne them. See October 15, 1853 ("They suddenly form thick beds or carpets on the ground . . . just the size and form of the tree above.")

They are regularly parti-colored. The last year's leaves,  are a clear yellow, contrasting with the fresh and liquid green of the terminal plumes, or this year's leaves. See October 14, 1852 (“The pines are now two-colored, green and yellow, - the latter just below the ends of the boughs.”)

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