We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

October 31. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Our currants bare; how long? 

The Italian poplars are now a dull greenish yellow, not nearly so fair as the few leaves that had turned some time ago. 

Some silvery abeles are the same color.  

I go over the Hubbard Bridge causeway. The young Salix alba osiers are just bare, or nearly so, and the yellow twigs accordingly begin to show. 

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. That warm weather of the 19th and 20th was, methinks, the same sort of weather with the most pleasant in November (which last alone some allow to be Indian summer), only more to be expected. 

I see many red oaks, thickly leaved, fresh and at the height of their tint. These are pretty clear yellow. It is much clearer yellow than any black oak, but some others are about bare. These and scarlet oaks, which are yet more numerous, are the only oaks not withered that I notice to-day, except one middle-sized white oak probably protected from frost under Lee’s Cliff. 

Between the absolutely deciduous plants and the evergreens are all degrees, not only those which retain their withered leaves all winter, but those, commonly called evergreen, which, though slow to change, yet acquire at last a ruddy color while they keep their leaves, as the lambkill and water andromeda (?).

Get a good sight on Conantum of a sparrow (such as I have seen in flocks some time), which utters a sharp te te-te quickly repeated as it flies, sitting on a wall three or four rods off. I see that it is rather long and slender, is perhaps dusky-ash above with some black backward; has a pretty long black bill, a white ring about eye, white chin and line under check, a black (or dark) spotted breast and dirty cream-color beneath; legs long and slender and perhaps reddish-brown, two faint light bars on wings; but, what distinguishes it more, it keeps gently jerking or tossing its tail as it sits, and when a flock flies over you see the tails distinctly black beneath. Though I detected no yellow, yet I think from the note that it must be the shore lark (such as I saw March 24th) in their fall plumage. They are a common bird at this season, I think. 

I see a middle-sized red oak side by side with a black one under Lee’s Cliff. The first is still pretty fresh, the latter completely withered. The withered leaves of the first are flat, apparently thin, and a yellowish brown;those of the black are much curled and a very different and dark brown, and look thicker. 

Barberry generally is thickly leaved and only some what yellowish or scarlet, say russet. 

I tasted some of the very small grapes on Blackberry Steep, such as I had a jelly made of. Though shrivelled, and therefore ripe, they are very acid and inedible. 

The slippery elm has a few scattered leaves on it, while the common close by is bare. So I think the former is later to fall. You may well call it bare. 

The cedar at Lee’s Cliff has apparently just fallen, — almost. 

As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red.

Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods near the Codman place, like huge roses with a myriad fine petals, and some more slender ones, in a small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, in the very horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove and shouldering them with their red coats, — an intense, burning red which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take to ward them, — look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. 

Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light, but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” working here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves, for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this distance. They are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected,[color] is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree, especially in the horizon, becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, the redness grows and glows like a cloud. It only has some comparatively dull-red leaves for a nucleus and to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. I have no doubt that you would be disappointed in the brilliancy of those trees if you were to walk to them. You see a redder tree than exists. It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. The scarlet oak asks the clear sky and the brightness of the Indian summer. These bring out its color. If the sun goes into a cloud they become indistinct. 

These are my China asters, my late garden flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

To my surprise, the only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand, and so are the Lombardy poplars in our streets. The Salix alba, too, looks yellower at a distance now. Their dull-brown and green colors do not report them selves so far, while the yellow crescit eundo, and we see the sun reflected in it. 

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before, standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. It is perhaps the largest of its species that I know. It was by merest accident that I stumbled on it, and if I had been sent to find it, I should have thought it to be, as we say, like looking for a needle in a haymow. All summer, and it chances for so many years, it has been concealed to me; but now, walking in a different direction, to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, and looking off just before sunset, when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color. 

Such is its fame, at last, and reward for living in that solitude and obscurity. It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape, and would be the cynosure of all eyes here. Thus it plays its part in the choir. I made a minute of its locality, glad to know where so large an aspen grew. Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity. It seemed the obscurest of trees. Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence. Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under. The sailor sails, and the soldier marches, under a color which will report his virtue farthest, and the ship’s “private signals” must be such as can be distinguished at the greatest distance. The eye, which distinguishes and appreciates color, is itself the seat of color in the human body. 

It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me, and now the acquaintance thus propitiously formed will, I trust, be permanent. 

Of the three (?) mocker-nuts on Conantum top only the southernmost is bare, the rest are thickly leaved yet. 

The Viburnum Lentago is about bare. 

That hour-glass apple shrub near the old Conantum house is full of small yellow fruit. Thus it is with them. By the end of some October, when their leaves have fallen, you see them glowing with an abundance of wild fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds them. Such is their pursuit of knowledge through difficulties. Though they may have taken the hour-glass form, think not that their sands are run out. So is it with the rude, neglected genius from amid the country hills; he suffers many a check at first, browsed on by fate, springing in but a rocky pasture, the nursery of other creatures there, and he grows broad and strong, and scraggy and thorny, hopelessly stunted, you would say, and not like a sleek orchard tree all whose forces are husbanded and the precious early years not lost, and when at first, within this rind and hedge, the man shoots up, you see the thorny scrub of his youth about him, and he walks like an hour-glass, aspiring above, it is true, but held down and impeded by the rubbish of old difficulties overcome, and you seem to see his sands running out. But at length, thanks to his rude culture, he attains to his full stature, and every vestige of the thorny hedge which clung to his youth disappears, and he bears golden crops of Porters or Baldwins, whose fame will spread through all orchards for generations to come, while that thrifty orchard tree which was his competitor will, perchance, have long since ceased to bear its engrafted fruit and decayed.

The beach plum is withering green, say with the apple trees, which are half of them bare. 

Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1858

Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. See 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 25, 1858 ("[I]t is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood.")

It becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. … It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. Compare October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. The air is filled with a remarkably vaporous haze.")

The only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know.")


Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height. See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.")

Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy.

October 30

October 30, 2018

Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy. 

The buttonwoods are in the midst of their fall. Some are bare. They-are late among the trees of the street. 

I see that Prichard’s mountain-ash (European) has lately put forth new leaves when all the old have fallen, and they are four or five inches long! But the American has not started. It knows better. 

Beware how you meddle with a buttonwood stump. I remember when one undertook to dig a large one up that he might set a front-yard post on the spot, but I forget how much it cost, or how many weeks one man was about it before it was all cut up and removed. It would have been better to set the post in it. One man who has just cut down a buttonwood had it disposed of, all but eight feet of the butt, when a neighbor offered him five cents for it, and though it contained a cord of wood, he, as he says, “took him up mighty quick,” for if a man’s time were of value he could not afford to be splitting it. 

In Rees’s Cyclopaedia, under the head of the Fall of the Leaf, mention is made of the leaves at this season “changing their healthy green color to more or less of a yellow, sometimes a reddish hue.” And after speaking of the remarkable brilliancy of the American forests, he says that some European plants allied to the brilliant American ones assume bright hues in the fall.

What is commonly described as the autumnal tints of the oaks generally, is for the most part those tints or hues which they have when partially withered, corresponding to those which those of more truly deciduous trees have when freshly fallen, and not merely the tints of their maturity, as in the maple, etc. 

It may account for this to say that the scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November, and large red and black and swamp white oaks, especially the two last (or excepting some of the first), are not commonly so interesting in the maturity of their leaves as before or after.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1858

Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy. See October 30, 1853 ("What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. Those which still hang on the trees are withered and dry. You may say the fall has ended. . . . The autumnal tints are gone.")

I see that Prichard’s mountain-ash (European) has lately put forth new leaves. See June 25, 1857 ("Most of the mountain-ash trees on the street are the European, as Prichard's, ")

What is commonly described as the autumnal tints of the oaks generally, is for the most part those tints or hues which they have when partially withered, and not merely the tints of their maturity. See Autumnal Tints ("Most appear to confound changed leaves with withered ones, as if they were to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits.")

The scarlet oak withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November. See 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.")

I see that scarlet

oak leaves have still some brightness;

the latest of the oaks.

October 30, 1855

Scarlet oaks wither

slowly and retain brightness

to mid-November.

October 30, 1858

See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

Large red and black and swamp white oaks are not commonly so interesting in the maturity of their leaves as before or after. See October 28, 1852 ("November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs."); November 3, 1852 ("[November] is the month of withered oak leaves.") 

Nature begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter.

October 29. 

In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle! 

6.30 A. M. — Very hard frost these mornings; the grasses, to their finest branches, clothed with it. 

The cat comes stealthily creeping towards some prey amid the withered flowers in the garden, which being disturbed by my approach, she runs low toward it with an unusual glare or superficial light in her eye, ignoring her oldest acquaintance, as wild as her remotest ancestor; and presently I see the first tree sparrow hopping there. I hear them also amid the alders by the river, singing sweetly, —but a few notes. 

Notwithstanding the few handsome scarlet oaks that may yet be found, and the larches and pitch pines and the few thin-leaved Populus grandidentata, the brightness of the foliage, generally speaking, is past. 

P. M. — To Baker Farm, on foot. 

The Salix Torreyana on the right has but few leaves near the extremities (like the S. sericea of the river), and is later to fall than the S. rostrata near by. Its leaves turn merely a brownish yellow, and not scarlet like the cordata, so that it is not allied to that in this respect. (In S. tristis path about Well Meadow Field the S. tristis is mostly fallen or withered on the twigs, and the curled leaves lie thickly like ashes about the bases of the shrubs.) 

Notice the fuzzy black and reddish caterpillars on ground. 

I look north from the causeway at Heywood’s meadow. How rich some scarlet oaks imbosomed in pines, their branches (still bright) intimately intermingled with the pine! They have their full effect there. The pine boughs are the green calyx to its  petals. Without these pines for contrast the autumnal tints would lose a considerable part of their effect. 

The white birches being now generally bare, they stand along the east side of Heywood’s meadow slender, parallel white stems, revealed in a pretty reddish maze produced by their fine branches. It is a lesser and denser smoke (?) than the maple one. The branches must be thick, like those of maples and birches, to give the effect of smoke, and most trees have fewer and coarser branches, or do not grow in such dense masses. 

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle! 

Looking toward Spanish Brook, I see the white pines, a clear green, rising amid and above the pitch pines, which are parti-colored, glowing internally with the warm yellow of the old leaves. Of our Concord evergreens, only the white and pitch pines are interesting in their change, for only their leaves are bright and conspicuous enough. 

I notice a barberry bush in the woods still thickly clothed, but merely thickly clothed, but merely yellowish-green, not showy. Is not this commonly the case with the introduced European plants? Have they not European habits? And are they not also late to fall, killed before they are ripe ?— e. g. the quince, apple, pear(?), barberry, silvery abele, privet, plum(?), white willow, weeping willow, lilac, hawthorn (the horse-chestnut and European mountain-ash are distincter yellow, and the Scotch larch is at least as bright as ours at same time; the Lombardy poplar is a handsome yellow (some branches early), and the cultivated cherry is quite handsome orange, often yellowish), which, with exceptions in parenthesis, are inglorious in their decay. 

As the perfect winged and usually bright-colored insect is but short-lived, so the leaves ripen but to fall. 

I go along the wooded hillside southwest of Spanish Brook. With the fall of the white pine, etc., the Pyrola umbellata and the lycopodiums, and even evergreen ferns, suddenly emerge as from obscurity. If these plants are to be evergreen, how much they require this brown and withered carpet to be spread under them for effect. Now, too, the light is let in to show them. Cold(?)-blooded wood frogs hop about amid the cool ferns and lycopodiums. 

Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know. It must be owing to its height above frosts, for the leaves of sprouts are fallen and withered some time, and of young trees commonly. 

October 29, 1852

Afterwards, when on the Cliff, I perceive that, birches being bare (or as good as bare), one or two poplars — I am not sure which species — take their places on the Shrub Oak Plain, and are brighter than they were, for they hold out to burn longer than the birch.

The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles, and those oak sprout-lands where they glowed are now an almost uniform brown red. Or, strictly speaking, they are pale-brown, mottled with dull red where the small scarlet oak stands.

I find the white pine cones, which have long since opened, hard to come off. 

The thickly fallen leaves make it slippery in the woods, especially climbing hills, as the Cliffs. 

The late wood tortoise and squirrel betrayed. 

Apple trees, though many are thick-leaved, are in the midst of their fall. Our English cherry has fallen. The silvery abele is still densely leaved, and green, or at most a yellowish green. The lilac still thickly leaved; a yellowish green or greenish yellow as the case may be. Privet thickly leaved. yellowish-green. 

If these plants acquire brighter tints in Europe, then one would say that they did not fully ripen their leaves here before they were killed. The orchard trees are not for beauty, but use. English plants have English habits here: they are not yet acclimated; they are early or late as if ours were an English spring or autumn; and no doubt in course of time a change will be produced in their constitutions similar to that which is observed in the English man here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1858

Notice the fuzzy black and reddish caterpillars on ground. See November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter."); January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway."); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball.”); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown.”)

How rich some scarlet oaks imbosomed in pines. See  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 especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén. See October 31, 1858 ("T o my surprise, the only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand . . . It seemed the obscurest of trees. Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence. . . . It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me, and now the acquaintance thus propitiously formed will, I trust, be permanent."); November 13, 1858 ("Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tallest Aspen

The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles. See October 22, 1855("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 26, 1857 (“Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches.”); October 26, 1860 (“The season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.”); October 28, 1854 (“Birches, which began to change and fall so early, are still in many places yellow.”)

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. See November 14, 1853 ("Now for the bare branches of the oak woods, where hawks have nested and owls perched, the sinews of the trees, and the brattling of the wind in their midst. For, now their leaves are off, they've bared their arms, thrown off their coats, and, in the attitude of fencers, await the onset of the wind.")

I find the white pine cones, which have long since opened, hard to come off. See October 13, 1860 ("So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year. This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?)"); October 15, 1855 ("Go to look for white pine cones, but see none.”); October 19, 1855 ("I see at last a few white pine cones open on the trees, but almost all appear to have fallen.")

https://tinyurl.com/HDT581029

There are now but few bright leaves to be seen.

October 28. 

Cattle coming down from up country. 

P. M. — Up Assabet to Cedar Swamp. 

Here is an Indian-summer day. Not so warm, indeed, as the 19th and 20th, but warm enough for pleasure. 

The majority of the white maples are bare, but others are still thickly leaved the leaves being a greenish yellow. It appears, then, that they hold their leaves longer than our other maples, or most trees. The majority of them do not acquire a bright tint at all, and, though interesting for their early summer blush, their autumnal colors are not remarkable. 

The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case. Apparently none have fallen. I see yet also some Cornus sericea bushes with leaves turned a clear dark but dull red, rather handsome. 

Some large red oaks are still as bright as ever, and that is here a brownish yellow, with leaves partly withered; and some are already quite bare.

Swamp white oak withers apparently with the white. Some of both are still partly greenish, while others of both are bare. 

How handsome the great red oak acorns now! I stand under the tree on Emerson’s lot. They are still falling. I heard one fall into the water as I approached, and thought that a musquash had plunged. They strew the ground and the bottom of the river thickly, and while I stand here I hear one strike the boughs with force as it comes down, and drop into the water. The part that was covered by the cup is whitish-woolly. How munificent is Nature to create this profusion of wild fruit, as it were merely to gratify our eyes! Though inedible they are more wholesome to my immortal part, and stand by me longer, than the fruits which I eat. If they had been plums or chestnuts I should have eaten them on the spot and probably forgotten them. They would have afforded only a momentary gratification, but being acorns, I remember, and as it were feed on, them still. They are untasted fruits forever in store for me. I know not of their flavor as yet. That is postponed to some still unimagined winter evening. These which we admire but do not eat are nuts of the gods. When time is no more we shall crack them. I cannot help liking them better than horse-chestnuts, which are of a similar color, not only because they are of a much handsomer form, but because they are indigenous. What hale, plump fellows they are! They can afford not to be useful to me, nor to know me or be known by me. They go their way, I go mine, and it turns out that sometimes I go after them. 

The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain. They are inconspicuous on the tree.

The Populus grandidentata leaves are not all fallen yet. This, then, is late to lose its leaves, later, rather, than the sugar maple. Its leaves are large and conspicuous on the ground, and from their freshness make a great show there. It is later to fall than the tremuliformic, as it was later to bloom. 

I now begin to notice the evergreen ferns, when the others are all withered or fallen. 

The black willows have been bare some time. 

Panicled andromeda and winterberry are about bare. 

Pitch pines are falling; and white cedars are apparently in the midst of their fall, turning a pale brown and strewing the ground. 

There are now but few bright leaves to be seen, 'viz.

3  Pitch pine (though most is faded on the trees).
2  Larch.
1  Scarlet oak.
4  Populus grandidentata (thin-leaved).
6  A few yellow leaves on young willows, coniferous ones and S. sericea especially, still holding on to the extremity of the twigs.
8  Some crimson Viburnum nudum (thin-leaved).
9  Meadow-sweet.
10  Some Viburnum dentatum, greenish purple (thin leaved, not conspicuous).
5  Some small white birch tops.
5  High blueberry (more common than last).
7  Some silky cornel.
14  Flowering dogwood.
11  Gooseberry.
12  Common wild rose, yellow inclining to scarlet.
12  Rosa Carolina (clear dark red) and sweet-briar.
13  Staghorn sumach, in cool places and shaded.

Numbered in the order of their importance, most being either very thin-leaved now, or rare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 28, 1858

The majority of the white maples are bare, but others are still thickly leaved. See note to October 14, 1858 ("The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress”)

The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case. See June 8, 1858 (“ Cornus florida at Island well out, say the 3d.”); August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”); October 12, 1858 (“The C. florida at Island shows some scarlet tints, but it is not much exposed.”)

 I see yet also some Cornus sericea bushes with leaves turned a clear dark but dull red, rather handsome. See  October 9, 1858 (“Some Cornus sericea looks quite greenish yet.”); October 12, 1858 (“The Cornus sericea begins to fall, though some of it is green”); October 17, 1858 (“The Cornus sericea is a very dark crimson, though it has lost some leaves.”)


How handsome the great red oak acorns now! See October 12, 1858 (“Acorns, red and white (especially the first), appear to be fallen or falling. They are so fair and plump and glossy that I love to handle them, and am loath to throw away what I have in my hand.”); September 30, 1854 ("The conventional acorn of art is of course of no particular species, but the artist might find it worth his while to study Nature’s varieties again.”)

The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain. See  October 8, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain. ”); October 16, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground.”); November 11, 1855 (“At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves . .. mathematically level. This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed, we have so few trees, and also the river’s rise”)

The Populus grandidentata leaves are not all fallen yet.    See  . November 5, 1858 ("A few Populus grandidentata leaves are still left on"); November 10, 1858 ("There are still a few leaves on the large Populus tremuliformis, but they will be all gone in a day or two. They have turned quite yellow.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)t

I now begin to notice the evergreen ferns. See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum,. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”)

There are now but few bright leaves to be seen. See October 23, 1857(“I can find no bright leaves now in the woods.”)

The first object I saw on approaching this planet in the spring.

October 27. 

6.30 a. m. — To Island by boat. 

The river still rises, — more than ever last night, owing to the rain of the 24th (which ceased in the night of the 24th). It is two feet higher than then. 

I hear a blackbird in the air; and these, methinks, are song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast. 

Now it is time to look out for walnuts, last and hardest crop of the year?

I love to be reminded of that universal and eternal spring when the minute crimson-starred female flowers of the hazel are peeping forth on the hillsides, — when Nature revives in all her pores.  

Some less obvious and commonly unobserved signs of the progress of the seasons interest me most, like the loose, dangling catkins of the hop-hornbeam or of the black or yellow birch. I can recall distinctly to my mind the image of these things, and that time in which they flourished is glorious as if it were before the fall of man. I see all nature for the time under this aspect. 

These features are particularly prominent; as if the first object I saw on approaching this planet in the spring was the catkins of the hop-hornbeam on the hillsides. As I sailed by, I saw the yellowish waving sprays.

See nowadays concave chocolate-colored fungi passing into dust on the edges, close on the ground in pastures.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1853

Song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast. See October 26, 1855 (“The song sparrow still sings on a button-bush.”); November 1, 1853 ("I now hear a robin, and see and hear some noisy and restless jays, and a song sparrow chips faintly. ")

Now it is time to look out for walnuts, last and hardest crop of the year? See October 27, 1855 ("It is high time we came a-nutting,")  See alao  October 24, 1852 ("I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts.”);  October 28, 1852 ("The boys are gathering walnuts.”); November 9, 1852 ("Fore part of November time for walnutting"); and note to December 10, 1856 ("Gathered this afternoon quite a parcel of walnuts on the hill.")  Also  October 11, 1860 ("The acorns are now in the very midst of their fall. . . .The best time to gather these nuts is now.”); October 22, 1857 ("Now is just the time for chestnuts.”); November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. “); November 18, 1858 (" Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts.”)

I love to be reminded of that universal and eternal spring. See   October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show.”); October 26, 1857 ("The seasons and all their changes are in me. . . . The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! ")

I can recall distinctly to my mind the image of . . . the catkins of the hop-hornbeam on the hillsides. See May 7, 1853 ("The catkins of the hop-hornbeam, yellow tassels hanging from the trees, which grow on the steep bank of the Assabet, give them a light, graceful, and quite noticeable appearance.")

Chocolate-colored fungi passing into dust on the edges. See October 5, 1856 (“This before they are turned to dust. Large chocolate-colored ones have long since burst and are spread out wide like a shallow dish”)

We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts.

October 27. 

P. M. — Sail to Fair Haven Pond. 

A moderate northerly wind and pleasant, clear day. 

There is a slight rustle from the withered pontederia.

The Scirpus lacustris, which was all conspicuously green on the 16th, has changed to a dull or brownish yellow. 

The bayonet rush also has partly changed, and now, the river being perhaps lower than before this season, shows its rainbow colors, though dull. It depends, then, on the river being low at an earlier period, say a month ago at least, when this juncus is in its full vigor, — though then, of course, you would not get the yellow!——that the colors may be bright. 

I distinguish four colors now, perfectly horizontal and parallel bars, as it were, six or eight inches wide as you look at the side of a dense patch along the shallow shore. The lowest is a dull red, the next clear green, then dull yellowish, and then dark brown. These colors, though never brilliant, are yet noticeable, and, when you look at a long and dense patch, have a rainbow-like effect. 

The red (or pinkish) is that part which has been recently submerged; the green, that which has not withered; the yellowish, what has changed; and the brown, the withered extremity, since it dies downward gradually from the tip to the bottom. The amount of it is that it decays gradually, beginning at the top, and throughout a large patch one keeps pace with another, and different parts of the plant being in different stages or states at the same time and, moreover, the whole being of a uniform height, a particular color in one plant corresponds exactly to the same in another, and so, though a single stalk would not attract attention, when seen in the mass they have this singular effect. 

I call it, therefore, the rainbow rush. When, moreover, you see it reflected in the water, the effect is very much increased. 

The leaves of the Salix cordata are now generally withered and many more fallen. They are light-brown, and many remain on the twigs, so many that this willow and the tristis I think must be peculiar in this respect as well as its  turning scarlet. Some others, as the sericea, are still yellow and greenish and have not been touched by frost. They must be tougher. 

At the east shore of Fair Haven Pond I see that clams have been moving close to the water’s edge. They have just moved a few feet toward the deeper water, but they came round a little, like a single wheel on its edge. 

Alders are fallen without any noticeable change of color. 

The leaves of young oaks are now generally withered, but many leaves of large oaks are greenish or alive yet. Many of them fall before withering. I see some now three quarters bare, with many living leaves left. Is it not because on larger trees they are raised above the effect of frost? 

We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts. 

Not only the leaves of trees and shrubs and flowers have been changing and withering, but almost countless sedges and grasses. They become pale-brown and bleached after the frost has killed them, and give that peculiar light, almost silvery, sheen to the fields in November. 

The colors of the fields make haste to harmonize with the snowy mantle which is soon to invest them and with the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year. 

They become more and more the color of the frost which rests on them. 

Think of the interminable forest of grasses which dies down to the ground every autumn! What a more than Xerxean army of wool-grasses and sedges without fame lie down to an ignominious death, as the mowers esteem it, in our river meadows each year, and become “old fog” to trouble the mowers, lodging as they fall, that might have been the straw beds of horses and cattle, tucked under them every night! The fine-culmed purple grass, which lately we admired so much, is now bleached as light as any of them.

Culms and leaves robbed of their color and withered by cold. This is what makes November—and the light reflected from the bleached culms of grasses and the bare twigs of trees! When many hard frosts have formed and melted on the fields and stiffened grass, they leave them almost as silvery as themselves. There is hardly a surface to absorb the light. 

It is remarkable that the autumnal change of our woods has left no deeper impression on our literature yet. There is no record of it in English poetry, apparently because, according to all accounts, the trees acquire but few bright colors there. Neither do I know any adequate notice of it in our own youthful literature, nor in the traditions of the Indians. One would say it was the very phenomenon to have caught a savage eye, so devoted to bright colors. In our poetry and science there are many references to this phenomenon, but it has received no such particular attention as it deserves. High-colored as are most political speeches, I do not detect any reflection, even, from the autumnal tints in them. They are as colorless and lifeless as the herbage in November. The year, with these dazzling colors on its margin, lies spread open like an illustrated volume. The preacher does not utter the essence of its teaching. 

A great many, indeed, have never seen this, the flower, or rather ripe fruit, of the year, — many who have spent their lives in towns and never chanced to come into the country at this season. I remember riding with one such citizen, who, though a fortnight too late for the most brilliant tints, was taken by surprise, and would not believe that the tints had been any brighter. He had never heard of this phenomenon before. 

October has not colored our poetry yet. 

Not only many have never witnessed this phenomenon, but it is scarcely remembered by the majority from year to year.

It is impossible to describe the infinite variety of hues, tints, and shades, for the language affords no names for them, and we must apply the same term monotonously to twenty different things. If I could exhibit so many different trees, or only leaves, the effect would be different. When the tints are the same they differ so much in purity and delicacy that language, to describe them truly, would have not only to be greatly enriched, but as it were dyed to the same colors herself, and speak to the eye as well as to the ear. And it is these subtle diflerences which especially attract and charm our eyes. Where else will you study color under such advantages? What other school of design can vie with this?

To describe these colored leaves you must use colored words. How tame and ineffectual must be the words with which we attempt to describe that subtle difference of tint, which so charms the eye? Who will undertake to describe in words the difference in tint between two neighboring leaves on the same tree? or of two thousand? — for by so many the eye is addressed in a glance. 

In describing the richly spotted leaves, for instance, how often we find ourselves using ineffectually words which merely indicate faintly our good intentions, giving them in our despair a terminal twist toward our mark, — such as reddish, yellowish, purplish, etc. We cannot make a hue of words, for they are not to be compounded like colors, and hence we are obliged to use such ineffectual expressions as reddish brown, etc. They need to be ground together.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1858

The leaves of the Salix cordata are now generally withered and many more fallen. They are light-brown, and many remain on the twigs, so many that this willow and the tristis I think must be peculiar in this respect as well as its turning scarlet. See October 16, 1858 ("It is remarkable among our willows for turning scarlet, and I can distinguish this species now by this,. . .. It is as distinctly scarlet as the gooseberry, though it may be lighter.")

We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts. See October 25, 1858 ("Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.”); November 18, 1857 (“The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight.”)

The cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year. See August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.”); October 24, 1858 (“the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. ); ;November 2, 1853("We come home in the autumn twilight. . . — clear white light, which penetrates the woods”); November 14, 1853 ("the clear, white, leafless twilight of November”)

The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later.

October 26. 

The sugar maples are about bare, except a few small ones. 

October 26, 2018

Minott remembers how he used to chop beech wood. He says that when frozen it is hard and brittle just like glass, and you must look out for the chips, for, if they strike you in the face, they will cut like a knife.

He says that some call the stake-driver “'belcher squelcher,” and some, “wollerkertoot. ” I used to call them “pump-er-gor’. ” Some say “slug-toot. ” 

The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands by the penthorum pool in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. I found the sap was flowing fast in it. White birches, elms, chestnuts, Salix alba (small willows), and white maple are a long time falling. The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later. 

I wear a thicker coat, my single thick fall coat, at last, and begin to feel my fingers cool early and late. One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens by his door, foreseeing what his customers will want as soon as it is finger-cold, and determined to get the start of his fellows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1858

The sugar maples are about bare, except a few small ones. See October 24, 1853 ("Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape"); October 25, 1853 ("The white maples are completely bare. ");October 25, 1855 ("The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry.") October 25, 1858 ("I see some alders about bare. Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. . . .At the pond the black birches are bare"); October 26, 1854 ("Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple.")

I used to call them “pump-er-gor’.See April 24, 1854 (" I hear the loud and distinct pump-a-gor of a stake-driver. Thus he announces himself."); and note to April, 25 1858 ("Goodwin says he heard a stake-driver several days ago.")

The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later."); October 21, 1855 ("Up Assabet. . . . [T]he scarlet oak is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! "); 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 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); 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. ")

The largest scarlet oak that I remember hereabouts stands in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and is now in its prime. See December 11, 1858 ("The large scarlet oak in the cemetery has leaves on the lower limbs near the trunk just like the large white oaks now."); January 19, 1859 {"Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by."); March 22, 1859 ("The great scarlet oak has now lost almost every leaf, while the white oak near it still retains them.")

One shopkeeper has hung out woollen gloves and even thick buckskin mittens See October 14, 1856 (“[F]inger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets”); October 20, 1859 (“It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket.”); November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); November 11, 1853 ("I wear mittens now.")

November Lights

October 25. 

P. M. — To the Beeches. 

October 25, 2023

I look at the willows by the causeway, east side, as I go, — Salix discolor, Torreyana, rostrata, and lucida are all almost quite bare, and the remaining leaves are yellow or yellowish. Those of the last the clearest and most conspicuous yellow. S. pedicellaris is merely yellowish, being rather green and not fallen. The S. alba at a distance looks very silvery in the light.

Now that the leaves are fallen (for a few days), the long yellow buds (often red-pointed) which sleep along the twigs of the S. discolor are very conspicuous and quite interesting, already even carrying our thoughts for ward to spring. I noticed them first on the 22d. They may be put with the azalea buds already noticed. Even bleak and barren November wears these gems on her breast in sign of the coming year. How many thoughts lie undeveloped, and as it were dormant, like these buds, in the minds of men!

This is the coolest day thus far, reminding me that I have only a half-thick coat on. The easterly wind comes cold into my ear, as yet unused to it. Yet this first decided coolness - not to say wintriness — is not only bracing but exhilarating and concentrating [to] our forces. So much the more I have a hearth and heart within me. We step more briskly, and brace ourselves against the winter. 

I see some alders about bare. Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. 

Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting. This is much fairer than the thistle-down. It apparently bursts its pods after rain especially (as yesterday’s), opening on the under side, away from succeeding rains. Half a dozen seeds or more, attached by the tips of their silks to the core of the pod, will be blown about there a long time before a strong puff launches them away, and in the meanwhile they are expanding and drying their silk. 

In the cut the F. hyemalis, which has been here for a month, flits away with its sharp twitter amid the falling leaves. This is a fall sound. 

At the pond the black birches are bare; how long? 

Now, as you walk in woods, the leaves rustle under your feet as much as ever. In some places you walk pushing a mass before you. In others they half cover pools that are three rods long. They make it slippery climbing hills. 

Now, too, for the different shades of brown, especially in sprout-lands. I see [three] kinds of oaks now, — the whitish brown of the white oak, the yellowish brown of the black oak, and the red or purplish brown [of the scarlet oak]  (if it can be called brown at all, for it is not faded to brown yet and looks full of life though really withered (i. e. the shrubs) for the most part, excepting here and there leading shoots or spring twigs, which glow as bright a scarlet as ever). There is no red here, but perhaps that may be called a lighter, yellowish brown, and so distinguished from the black in color. It has more life in it now than the white and black, not withered so much. These browns are very pure and wholesome colors, far from spot and decay, and their rustling leaves call the roll for a winter campaign. How different now the rustling of these sere leaves from the soft, fluttering murmur of the same when alive! This sharp rustle warns all to go home now who are not prepared for a winter campaign.

The scarlet oak shrubs are as distinct amid the other species as before they had withered, and it is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood. Nature ever plots against Baker and Stow, Moore and Hosmer. 

The black scrub oak, seen side by side with the white, is yet lighter than that. 

How should we do without this variety of oak leaves, — the forms and colors? On many sides, the eye requires such variety (seemingly infinite) to rest on. 

Chestnut trees are generally bare, showing only a thin crescent of burs, for they are very small this year. I climb one on Pine Hill, looking over Flint’s Pond, which, indeed, I see from the ground. These young chestnuts growing in clumps from a stump are hard to climb, having few limbs below, far apart, and they dead and rotten. 

The brightest tint of the black oaks that I remember was some yellow gleams from half green and brownish leaves; i. e., the tops of the large trees have this yellowish and green look. It is a mellow yellow enough, without any red. The brightest of the red oaks were a pretty delicate scarlet, inclining to a brownish yellow, the effect enhanced by the great size of the leaf. 

When, on the 22d, I was looking from the Cliffs on the shrub oak plain, etc., calling some of the brightest tints flame-like, I saw the flames of a burning — for we see their smokes of late—two or three miles distant in Lincoln rise above the red shrubbery, and saw how in intensity and brilliancy the real flame distanced all colors, even by day.

Now, especially, we notice not only the silvery leaves of the Salix alba but the silvery sheen of pine—needles; i. e., when its old leaves have fallen and trees generally are mostly bare, in the cool Novemberish air and light we observe and enjoy the trembling shimmer and gleam of the pine-needles. 

I do not know why we perceive this more at this season, unless because the air is so clear and all surfaces reflect more light; and, besides, all the needles now left are fresh ones, or the growth of this year. Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light. 

In November consider the sharp, dry rustle of withered leaves; the cool, silvery, and shimmering gleams of light, as above; the fresh bright buds formed and exposed along the twigs; walnuts. 

The leaves of the Populus grandidentata, though half fallen and turned a pure and handsome yellow, are still wagging as fast as ever. These do not lose their color and wither on the tree like oaks and beeches and some of their allies, and hickories, too, and button wood, neither do maples, nor birches quite, nor willows (except the Salix tristis and perhaps some of the next allied), — but they are fresh and unwilted, full of sap and fair as ever when they are first strewn on the ground. I do not think of any tree whose leaves are so fresh and fair when they fall.

The beech has just fairly turned brown of different shades, but not yet crisped or quite withered. Only the young in the shade of the woods are yet green and yellow. Half the leaves of the last are a light yellow with a green midrib, and are quite light and bright seen through the woods. The lower parts, too, of the large tree are yellow yet. I should put this tree, then, either with the main body of the oaks or between them and the scarlet oak. I have not seen enough to judge of their beauty. 

Returning in an old wood-path from top of Pine Hill to Goose Pond, I see many goldenrods turned purple — all the leaves. Some of them are Solidago coesia and some (I think) S. puberula. Many goldenrods, as S. odorata, turn yellow or paler. The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides. The Viburnum dentatum leaves, which are rather thin now, are drooping like the Cornus sericea (although fresh), and are mixed purplish and light green.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 25, 1858

I look at the willows by the causeway, -- all almost quite bare. See October 25, 1855 ("The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry.")

Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting. See October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting."); September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting.")

In the cut the F. hyemalis, which has been here for a month, flits away with its sharp twitter amid the falling leaves. This is a fall sound.  See October 22, 1859 ("F. hyemalis quite common for a week past."); October 26, 1857 ("each uttering a faint chip from time to time, as if to keep together, bewildering you so that you know not if the greater part are gone by or still to come. One rests but a moment on the tree before you and is gone again. You wonder if they know whither they are bound, and how their leader is appointed.") See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

The leaves rustle under your feet as much as ever. In some places you walk pushing a mass before you. See  October 10, 1851 ("You make a great noise now walking in the woods."); October 20, 1853 ("How pleasant to walk over beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling fallen leaves!")  October 22, 1854 ('Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods."); October 22, 1857 ("As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing. "); October 28, 1852 ("I hear no sound but the rustling of the withered leaves, and, on the wooded hilltops, the roar of the wind.”); October 28, 1860 ("We make a great noise going through the fallen leaves in the woods and wood-paths now, so that we cannot hear other sounds. ”)

Another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light. See October 16, 1859 ("This clear, cold, Novemberish light is inspiriting. Some twigs which are bare and weeds begin to glitter with hoary light. The very edge or outline of a tawny or russet hill has this hoary fight on it. Your thoughts sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs."); November 28, 1856 ("At 3.30 p. m., the sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches, very dense and ascendant with a marked parallelism, they remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

The scarlet oak shrubs are as distinct amid the other species . . . distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood. See October 31, 1858 ("There is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red."); 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." )See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

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