The heavy shadows that began in June take their departure, November being at hand.

October 18. 

October 18 2017

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Clear and pleasant afternoon, but cooler than before.

At the brook beyond Hubbard's Grove, I stand to watch the water-bugs (Gyrinus). The shallow water appears now more than usually clear there, as the weather is cooler, and the shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. But why are they composed, as it were, of two circles run together, the foremost largest? Is it owing to the manner in which the light falls on their backs, in two spots? You think that the insect must be amused with this pretty shadow. I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface. 

Many alders and birches just bare. 

I should say that the autumnal change and brightness of foliage began fairly with the red maples (not to speak of a very few premature trees in water) September 25th, and ends this year, say generally October 22d, or maybe two or three days earlier. 

The fall of the leaf, in like way, began fairly with the fall of the red maple leaves, October 13th, and ended at least as early as when the pitch pines had generally fallen, November 5th (the larches are about a week later). The red maples are now fairly bare, though you may occasionally see one full of leaves. 

So gradually the leaves fall, after all,—though individuals will be completely stripped in one short windy rain-storm, - that you scarcely miss them out of the landscape; but the earth grows more bare, and the fields more hoary, and the heavy shadows that began in June take their departure, November being at hand. 

I go along the sunny west side of the Holden wood. 

Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones. They crawl off a little into the bushes, and rest there half-concealed till I am gone. 

The bass and the black ash are completely bare; how long? 

Red cedar is fallen and falling. 

Looking across to the sprout-land beneath the Cliffs, I see that the pale brown of withered oak leaves begins to be conspicuous, amid the red, in sprout-lands. 

In Lee's Wood, white pine leaves are now fairly fallen (not pitch pine yet), — a pleasant, soft, but slippery carpet to walk on. They sometimes spread leafy twigs on floors. Would not these be better? Where the pines stand far apart on grassy pasture hillsides, these tawny patches under each tree contrast singularly with the green around. I see them under one such tree completely and evenly covering and concealing the grass, and more than an inch deep, as they lie lightly. These leaves, like other, broader ones, pass through various hues (or shades) from green to brown, — first yellow, giving the tree that parti-colored look, then pale brown when they fall, then reddish brown after lying on the ground, and then darker and darker brown when decaying. 

I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries. 

The red oaks I see to-day are full of leaves, — a brownish yellow (with more or less green, but no red or scarlet). 

I find an abundance of those small, densely clustered grapes, – not the smallest quite, – still quite fresh and full on green stems, and leaves crisp but not all fallen; so much later than other grapes, which were further advanced October 4th when it was too late to get many. These are not yet ripe and may fairly be called frost grapes. Half-way up Blackberry Steep, above the rock. 

The huckleberries on Conantum appear to have been softened and spoilt by the recent rain, for they are quite thick still on many bushes. Their leaves have fallen. 

So many leaves have now fallen in the woods that a squirrel cannot run after a nut without being heard. 

As I was returning over Hubbard's stump fence pasture, I heard some of the common black field crickets [Acheta abbreviata] (three quarters of an inch long), two or three rods before me, make, as I thought, a peculiar shrilling, like a clear and sharp twittering of birds, that I looked up for some time to see a flock of small birds going over, but they did not arrive. These fellows were, one or two, at the mouth of their burrows, and as I stood over one I saw how he produced the sound, by very slightly lifting his wing-cases (if that is the name of them), and shuffling them (transversely of course) over each other about an eighth of an inch, perhaps three or four times, and then stopping. Thus they stand at the mouths of their burrows, in the warm pastures, near the close of the year, shuffling their wing-cases over each other (the males only), and produce this sharp but pleasant creaking sound, – helping to fetch the year about. 

Thus the sounds of human industry and activity — the roar of cannon, blasting of rocks, whistling of locomotives, rattling of carts, tinkering of artisans, and voices of men - may sound to some distant ear like an earth-song and the creaking of crickets. 

The crickets keep about the mouths of their burrows as if apprehending cold. 

The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1857