A sort of afterglow in the flowery year.

October 14. 

P. M. — Sail to Ball’s Hill. 

October 14, 2018

The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress. The leaves are much curled and of a pale hoary or silvery yellow, with often a rosaceous cheek, though not so high-colored as two months ago. They are beginning to lose their leaves. Though they still hold on, they have lost much of their vitality. 

On the top of Ball’s Hill, nearly half-way its length, the red pine-sap, quite fresh, apparently not long in bloom, the flower recurved. As last year, I suspect that this variety is later than the yellowish one, of which I have seen none for a long time. The last, in E. Hubbard’s wood, is all brown and withered. This is a clear and distinct deep-red from the ground upward, all but the edges and tips of the petals, and is very handsome amid the withered lower leaves, as it were the latest flower of the year. The roots have not only a sweet earthy, but decidedly checkerberry, scent. At length this fungus-like plant bursts red-ripe, stem and all, from the ground. Its deep redness reminds me of the deeper colors of the western sky after the sun has set, — a sort of afterglow in the flowery year. I suspect that it is eminently an autumnal flower. 

The tufts of Andropogon scoparius, which is common on the sandy shore under Ball’s Hill and yet more on the hill just behind Reuben Brown’s place, are now in their autumnal state, — recurved [?] culms adorned with white fuzzy spikes. The culms still are of a dull-red color, quite agreeable in the sun. 

Paddling slowly back, we enjoy at length very perfect reflections in the still water. The blue of the sky, and indeed all tints, are deepened in the reflection.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1858

The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress though not so high-colored as two months ago. See August 8, 1854 ("I see one large white maple crisped and tinged with a sort of rosaceous tinge, just above the Golden Horn.”); August 15, 1858 (“The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising.”); August 22, 1856 (“I notice three or four clumps of white maples, at the swamp up the Assabet, which have turned as red (dull red) as ever they do, fairly put on their autumnal hue.”); September 8, 1858 ("I perceive the dark-crimson leaves, quite crisp, of the white maple on the meadows, recently fallen.") September 10, 1857 (“the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off now give a rosaceous tinge to the edge of the meadow.”); October 4, 1858 (“The white maples that changed first are about bare. ”); October 8, 1857 (“Those white maples that were so early to change in the water have more than half lost their leaves.”); October 15, 1857 ("some white maples by the river are nearly bare."); October 17, 1858 ("I see one or two large white maples quite bare”); October 28, 1858 (“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. ”); November 5, 1858 (“A few white maples are not yet bare, but thinly clothed with dull-yellow leaves which still have life in them. ")

The red pine-sap, quite fresh, apparently not long in bloom, a clear and distinct deep-red afterglow in the flowery year. See July 8, 1857 ("Edith Emerson . . .[s]ays she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.”);  August 14, 1856 (“Hypopitys, just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook, about done. Apparently a fungus like plant. It erects itself in seed.”); August 23, 1858 (“See an abundance of pine-sap on the right of Pine-sap Path.”); September 23, 1857 (“The red variety is very common and quite fresh generally there.”);September 23, 1860 (“Red pine-sap by north side of Yew Path some ten rods east of yew, not long done. The root of the freshest has a decided checkerberry scent, and for a long time — a week after — in my chamber, the bruised plant has a very pleasant earthy sweetness. ”); October 6, 1857 (“I see a great quantity of hypopitys, now all sere, along the path in the woods beyond. Call it Pine-Sap Path. It seems to have been a favorable season for it”) and note to September 9, 1857 (“C. brings me a small red hypopitys. It has a faint sweet, earthy, perhaps checkerberry, scent”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pine-sap and Tobacco-pipe

Perfect reflections in the still water. The blue of the sky deepened in the reflection.  See April 14, 1855 (“The waters, too, are smooth and full of reflections.”); September 20, 1852 (“The reflected sky is a deeper blue.”);  August 31, 1852 ("That part of the sky just above the horizon seen reflected, apparently, some rods off from the boat is as light a blue as the actual, but it goes on deepening as your eye draws nearer to the boat, until, when you look directly down at the reflection of the zenith, it is lost in the blackness of the water.”);  January 9, 1853 ("I see to-day the reflected sunset sky in the river, but the colors in the reflection are different from those in the sky.”)