This tallest aspen.

October 31, 2023

The other day

Walking through the woods

I came to a tall aspen

that I had not seen

standing in the midst

of the woods in the next town,

leaves yellowish green.

All summer – and it

chances for so many years  –

it has been concealed.

Perhaps the largest

of its species that I know,

I stumbled on it

by mere accident

after walking a couple

hours the other day.

Peculiar in 

its solitude it seemed the

obscurest of trees.

From this hilltop

Now to my surprise

a mile off across the pond

I see one large tree

which I distinguish

by form and color to be

my new acquaintance

Tremulifomis

the only yellow I see –

my tallest aspen

the most distinct tree

in all the landscape coming

half-way to meet me.

October 31, 1858

October 29, 2022

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.") and December 15 , 1841 ("The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens; 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 . . .We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it”); November 28, 1858 (“And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge!”)

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, l

ike 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 . . .

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.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Tallest Aspen

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2022

https://tinyurl.com/HDTaspen

The rich nutmeg fragrance of black walnuts.

October 28

October 29, 2019

Goldenrods and asters have been altogether lingering some days. 

Walnuts commonly fall, and the black walnuts at Smith's are at least half fallen.  They are of the form and size of a small lemon and — what is singular — have a rich nutmeg fragrance. They are now turning dark-brown. 

Gray says it is rare in the Eastern but very common in the Western States. Is it indigenous in Massachusetts? [Emerson says it is, but rare.] If so, it is much the most remarkable nut that we have.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 28, 1859

Walnuts commonly fall. See  October 14, 1859 ("At Baker's wall two of the walnut trees are bare but full of green nuts (in their green cases), which make a very pretty sight as they wave in the wind. So distinct you could count every one against the sky, for there is not a leaf on these trees, but other walnuts near by are yet full of leaves.") October 27, 1857 ("Now it is time to look out for walnuts"); October 28, 1852 ("The boys are gathering walnuts. Their leaves are a yellowish brown. "); November 20, 1858 ("When walnut husks have fairly opened, showing the white shells within, — the trees being either quite bare or with a few withered leaves at present, — a slight jar with the foot on the limbs causes them to rattle down in a perfect shower, and on bare, grass-grown pasture ground it is very easy picking them up.")

Black walnuts rare.  See October 27, 1856 ("Black walnut . . . were pretty common[in New Jersey] ");June 8, 1857 ("There are two good-sized black walnuts at Cyrus Smith's"); June 23, 1857 ("Pratt says he knows of a black walnut at Hunt's on Ponkawtasset. "); May 12, 1858 ("They use [chestnut] wood for coffins, instead of black walnut.");

By cars in evening to Allyn's Point and Steamer Commonwealth to New York.

October 24. 

Friday. 12 m. — Set out for Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, N. J. 

Spent the afternoon in Worcester. 

By cars in evening to Allyn's Point and Steamer Commonwealth to New York.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1856

Steamer Commonwealth to New York. See letter to Sophia, ("to New York in the steamer Commonwealth, and, though it was so windy inland, had a perfectly smooth passage"); see also October 25, 1856. ("Saw, at Barnum's Museum, the stuffed skin of a cougar that was found floating dead in the Hudson many years ago. . . Arrived at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, Saturday, 5 p. m., October 25th.")

October has been the month of autumnal tints.

October 23. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

This may be called an Indian-summer day. 

It is quite hazy withal, and the mountains invisible. I see a horehound turned lake or steel-claret color. The yellow lily pads in Hubbard's ditch are fresh, as if recently expanded. There are some white lily pads in river still, but very few indeed of the yellow lily. A pasture thistle on Conantum just budded, but flat with the ground. The fields generally wear a russet hue. 

A striped snake out.

The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds. 

The bass has lost its leaves. 

I see where boys have gathered the mockernut, though it has not fallen out of its shells. 

The red squirrel chirrups in the walnut grove. 

The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.

The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored. 

Is it the procumbent speedwell (Veronica agrestis) still in flower on Lee's Cliff? But its leaves are neither heart-ovate nor shorter than the peduncles. 

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air, and recurved.

 

October 22, 2020

(Avesong)

The pennyroyal stands brown and sere, though fragrant still, on the shelves of the Cliff. 

The elms in the street have nearly lost their leaves. 

October has been the month of autumnal tints. 

October 22, 2020

October 23, 2016

The first of the month the tints began to be more general, at which time the frosts began, though there were scattered bright tints long before; but not till then did the forest begin to be painted. By the end of the month the leaves will either have fallen or besered and turned brown by the frosts for the most part. 

Also the month of barberries and chestnuts. 

My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. 

A stranger takes me for something else than I am. We do not speak, we cannot communicate, till we find that we are recognized. The stranger supposes in our stead a third person whom we do not know, and we leave him to converse with that one. It is suicide for us to become abetters in misapprehending ourselves. Suspicion creates the stranger and substitutes him for the friend. I cannot abet any man in misapprehending myself. 

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in barrooms and elsewhere, but it does not-deserve the name of virtue.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1852


The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines. See October 13, 1852    ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day. . . The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks. ")See also October 10, 1851 ("flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me");; 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 ("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.")

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air.  See October 20, 1852 ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

I cannot excuse myself for using the stone.

October 23. 

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

The streets are strewn with buttonwood leaves, which rustle under your feet, and the children are busy raking them into heaps, some for bonfires. 

The large elms are bare; not yet the buttonwoods. 

The sugar maples on the Common stand dense masses of rich yellow leaves with a deep scarlet blush,—far more than blush. They are remarkably brilliant this year on the exposed surfaces. The last are as handsome as any trees in the street. 

I am struck with the handsome form and clear, though very pale, say lemon, yellow of the black birch leaves on sprouts in the woods, finely serrate and distinctly plaited from the midrib. 

I plucked three leaves from the end of a red maple shoot, an underwood, each successively smaller than the last, the brightest and clearest scarlet that I ever saw. These and the birch attracted universal admiration when laid on a sheet of white paper and passed round the supper table, and several inquired particularly where I found them. I never saw such colors painted. They were without spot; ripe leaves.

The small willows two or three feet high by the road side in woods have some rich, deep chrome-yellow leaves with a gloss. The sprouts are later to ripen and richer-colored. 

The pale whitish leaves (I horehound in damp grassy paths, with its spicy fruit in the axils, are tinged with purple or lake more or less. - 

Going through what was E. Hosmer’s muck-hole pond, now almost entirely dry, the surface towards the shore is covered with a dry crust more or less cracked, which crackles under my feet. I strip it up like bark in long pieces, three quarters of an inch thick and a foot wide and two long. It appears to be composed of fine mosses and perhaps utricularia and the like, such as grow in water. A little sphagnum is quite conspicuous, erect but dry, in it. 

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. 

But I cannot excuse myself for using the stone. It is not innocent, it is not just, so to maltreat the tree that feeds us. I am not disturbed by considering that if I thus shorten its life I shall not enjoy its fruit so long, but am prompted to a more innocent course by motives purely of humanity. I sympathize with the tree, yet I heaved a big stone against the trunks like a robber,—not too good to commit murder. I trust that I shall never do it again.


These gifts should be accepted, not merely with gentleness, but with a certain humble gratitude. The tree whose fruit we would obtain should not be too rudely shaken even. It is not a time of distress, when a little haste and violence even might be pardoned. It is worse than boorish, it is criminal to inflict an unnecessary injury on the tree that feeds or shadows us. 

Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others. The thought that I was robbing myself by injuring the tree did not occur to me, but I was affected as if I had cast a rock at a sentient being, — with a duller sense than my own, it is true, but yet a distant relation. 

Behold a man cutting down a tree to come at the fruit! What is the moral of such an act? 

Faded white ferns now at Saw Mill Brook. They press yellow or straw-color.

Ah! we begin old men in crime. Would that we might grow innocent at last as the children of light! 

A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t.

Is that tall weed in Mrs. Brooks’s yard Cacalia suaveolens?? Yet stem more angled than grooved; four or five feet high. Some time ago. 

Cousin Charles writes that his horse drew 5286 pounds up the hill from Hale’s factory, at Cattle-Show in Haverhill the other day.

H. D. Thorerau, Journal,  October 23, 1855

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. See October 24, 1857 ("I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts. ")

A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t. See October 23, 1853 ("I see a downy woodpecker tapping an apple tree, and hear, when I have passed, his sharp, metallic note."); December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

It is the season of fuzzy seeds.

October 23. 

Sunday. P. M. — Down railroad to chestnut wood on Pine Hill. 

October 23, 2022

A pleasant day, but breezy. 

I see a downy woodpecker tapping an apple tree, and hear, when I have passed, his sharp, metallic note.

 I notice these flowers still along the railroad causeway: 

• fresh sprouts from the root of the Solidago nemoralis in bloom,
• one or two fall dandelions,
• red clover and white,
• yarrow, 
• Trifolium arvense (perhaps not fresh),
• one small blue snapdragon,
• fresh tansy in bloom on the sunny sand bank. 

There are green leaves on the ends of elder twigs; blackberry vines still red; apple trees yellow and brown and partly bare; white ash bare (nearly); golden willows yellow and brown; white birches, exposed, are nearly bare; some pines still parti-colored. 

White, black, and red oaks still hold most of their leaves. What a peculiar red has the white! And some black have now a rich brown. 

The Populus grandidentata near railroad, bare; the P. tremuloides, half bare.

The hickories are finely crisped, yellow, more or less browned. 

Several yellow butterflies in the meadow. 

And many birds flit before me along the railroad, with faint notes, too large for linarias. Can they be tree sparrows ? Some weeks. [Probably the white-in-tail [i. e. vesper sparrow, or grass finch].] 

Many phenomena remind 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. 

Everywhere in the fields I see the white, hoary (ashy-colored) sceptres of the gray goldenrod. Others are slightly yellowish still. The yellow is gone out of them, as the last flake of sunshine disappears from a field when the clouds are gathering. But though their golden hue is gone, their reign is not over. Compact puffed masses of seeds ready to take wing. They will send out their ventures from hour to hour the winter through. 

The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. 

I go through Brooks's Hollow. 

The hazels bare, only here and there a few sere, curled leaves on them. 

The red cherry is bare. 

The blue flag seed-vessels at Walden are bursting, — six closely packed brown rows. 

I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days. A storm of arrows these weeds have showered on me, as I went through their moats. How irksome the task to rid one's self of them! We are fain to let some adhere. Through thick and thin I wear some; hold on many days. In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and  I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. They are as thick on my clothes as the teeth of a comb. 

The prinos is bare, leaving red berries. 

The pond has gone down suddenly and surprisingly since I was here last, and this pool is left, cut off at a higher level, stagnant and drying up. This is its first decided going down since its going up a year or two ago. 

The red-looking water purslane is left bare, and the water-target leaves are turned brown and drying up on the bare mud. 

The clethra partly bare, crisped, yellowish and brown, with its fruit with persistent styles (?) in long racemes. 

Here are dense fields of light-colored rattlesnake grass drooping with the weight of their seeds. 

The high blueberries about the pond have still a few leaves left on, turned bright scarlet red. These it is adorn the shore so, seen at a distance, small but very bright. 

The panicled andromeda is thinly clad with yellow and brown leaves, not sere. 

Alders are green. 

Smooth sumach bare. 

Chestnuts commonly bare. 

I now notice the round red buds of the high blueberry. 

The blue-stemmed, and also the white, solidago on Walden bank. 

Small sassafras trees bare. 

The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank, — far more so than the Solidago coesia, — and methinks it is the latest of our asters and is besides the most common or conspicuous flower now. It is in large, dense masses, two or three feet high, pale purple or whitish, and covered with humble- bees. The radical leaves, now hearted and crenatish, are lake beneath. 

Also a hieracium quite freshly bloomed, but with white, bristly leaves and smooth stem, about twenty-flowered; peduncles and involucres glandular-hairy. Is it Gronovii or veiny-leaved? Almost as slender as the panicled. (In press.) 

No gerardias. 

Strawberries are red and green. 

It is the season of fuzzy seeds, — goldenrods, everlasting, senecio, asters, epilobium, etc., etc. 

Viburnum Lentago, with ripe berries and dull-glossy red leaves; young black cherry, fresh green or yellow; mayweed. 

The chestnuts have mostly fallen. 

One Diplopappus linariifolius in bloom, its leaves all yellow or red. 

This and A. undulatus the asters seen to-day. 

The red oak now red, perhaps inclining to scarlet; the white, with that peculiar ingrained redness; the shrub oak, a clear thick leather-color; some dry black oak, darker brown; chestnut, light brown; hickory, yellow, turning brown. These the colors of some leaves I brought home.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1853

I see a downy woodpecker tapping an apple tree, and hear, when I have passed, his sharp, metallic note.  See October 23, 1855 ("A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t. "); December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. See 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")

The Populus grandidentata near railroad, bare; the P. tremuloides, half bare. See October 21, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata is quite yellow and leafy yet. "); October 25, 1858 ("Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. ")

Is it Gronovii or veiny-leaved? See note to July 17, 1853 ("I think we have no Hieracium Gronoviis")

tinyurl.com/HDT531023

It warms us twice, and the first warmth is the most wholesome and memorable

October 22. 

A week or more of fairest Indian summer ended last night, for to-day it rains. It was so warm day before yesterday, I worked in my shirt-sleeves in the woods. 

I cannot easily dismiss the subject of the fallen leaves. 

How densely they cover and conceal the water for several feet in width, under and amid the alders and button-bushes and maples along the shore of the river, — still light, tight, and dry boats, dense cities of boats, their fibres not relaxed by the waters, undulating and rustling with every wave, of such various pure and delicate, though fading, tints, — of hues that might make the fame of teas, — dried on great Nature's coppers. 

And then see this great fleet of scattered leaf boats, still tight and dry, each one curled up on every side by the sun's skill, like boats of hide, scarcely moving in the sluggish current, — like the great fleets with which you mingle on entering some great mart, some New York which we are all approaching together. 

Or else they are slowly moving round in some great eddy which the river makes, where the water is deep and the current is wearing into the bank. How gently each has been deposited on the water! No violence has been used toward them yet. But next the shore, as thick as foam they float, and when you turn your prow that way, list! what a rustling of the crisped waves! 

Wet grounds about the edges of swamps look dry with them, and many a wet foot you get in consequence.

 Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed upon the earth. This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year. This annual decay and death, this dying by inches, before the whole tree at last lies down and turns to soil. As trees shed their leaves, so deer their horns, and men their hair or nails. The year's great crop. 

I am more interested in it than in the English grass alone or in the corn. It prepares the virgin mould for future corn fields on which the earth fattens. They teach us how to die. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! A myriad wrappers for germinating seeds. By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. 

The ground is all parti-colored with them. For beautiful variety can any crop be compared with them? The dogwood (poison sumach) blazing its sins as scarlet, the early-blushing maple, the rich chrome (?) yellow of the poplar, the mulberry ash, the brilliant red huckleberry with which the hills' backs are painted like sheep's, — not merely the plain flavidness of corn, but all the colors of the rainbow. 

The salmon-colored oaks, etc., etc. The frost touches them, and, with the slightest breath of day or jarring of earth's axle, see in what showers they come floating down, at the first earnest touch of autumn's wand. 

They stoop to rise, to mount higher in coming years by subtiler chemistry, and the sapling's first fruits, thus shed, transmuted at last, may adorn its crown, when, in after years, it has become the monarch of the forest.

Yesterday, toward night, gave Sophia and mother a sail as far as the Battle-Ground. One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — though he is regarded by most as a vicious character, — whose whole motive was so easy to fathom, — thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably. 

So much do we love actions that are simple. They are all poetic. We, too, would fain be so employed. 

So unlike the pursuits of most men, so artificial or complicated. Consider how the broker collects his winter's wood, what sport he makes of it, what is his boat and hand-cart! Postponing instant life, he makes haste to Boston in the cars, and there deals in stocks, not quite relishing his employment, — and so earns the money with which he buys his fuel. And when, by chance, I meet him about this indirect and complicated business, I am not struck with the beauty of his employment. It does not harmonize with the sunset. How much more the former consults his genius, some genius at any rate! 

Now I should love to get my fuel so, — I have got some so, — but though I may be glad to have it, I do not love to get it in any other way less simple and direct. 

For if I buy one necessary of life, I cheat myself to some extent, I deprive myself of the pleasure, the inexpressible joy, which is the unfailing reward of satisfying any want of our nature simply and truly. 

No trade is simple, but artificial and complex. It postpones life and substitutes death. It goes against the grain. If the first generation does not die of it, the third or fourth does. In face of all statistics, I will never believe that it is the descendants of tradesmen who keep the state alive, but of simple yeomen or laborers. 

This, indeed, statistics say of the city reinforced by the country. The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last. He makes a habit of disregarding the moral right and wrong for the legal or political, commits a slow suicide, and thinks to recover by retiring on to a farm at last. This simplicity it is, and the vigor it imparts, that enables the simple vagabond, though he does get drunk and is sent to the house of correction so often, to hold up his head among men. 

"If I go to Boston every day and sell tape from morning till night," says the merchant (which we will admit is not a beautiful action), "some time or other I shall be able to buy the best of fuel without stint." Yes, but not the pleasure of picking it up by the riverside, which, I may say, is of more value than the warmth it yields, for it but keeps the vital heat in us that we may repeat such pleasing exercises. 

It warms us twice, and the first warmth is the most wholesome and memorable, compared with which the other is mere coke. It is to give no account of my employment to say that I cut wood to keep me from freezing, or cultivate beans to keep me from starving. Oh, no, the greatest value of these labors is received before the wood is teamed home, or the beans are harvested (or winnowed from it). 

Goodwin stands on the solid earth. 

The earth looks solider under him, and for such as he no political economies, with their profit and loss, supply and demand, need ever be written, for they will need to use no policy. As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth. There is no secret in his trade, more than in the sun's. It is no mystery how he gets his living; no, not even when he steals it. But there is less double-dealing in his living than in your trade. 

Goodwin is a most constant fisherman. He must well know the taste of pickerel by this time. He will fish, I would not venture to say how many days in succession. When I can remember to have seen him fishing almost daily for some time, if it rains, I am surprised on looking out to see him slowly wending his way to the river in his oilcloth coat, with his basket and pole. 

I saw him the other day fishing in the middle of the stream, the day after I had seen him fishing on the shore, while by a kind of magic I sailed by him; and he said he was catching minnow for bait in the winter. When I was twenty rods off, he held up a pickerel that weighed two and a half pounds, which he had forgot to show me before, and the next morning, as he afterward told me, he caught one that weighed three pounds. 

If it is ever necessary to appoint a committee on fish-ponds and pickerel, let him be one of them. Surely he is tenacious of life, hard to scale.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 22, 1853

One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart . . ., — though he is regarded by most as a vicious character, — whose whole motive was so easy to fathom, — thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably. . . .Goodwin stands on the solid earth . . . Goodwin is a most constant fisherman. See November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season. ");   November 28, 1858 ("Goodwin cannot be a very bad man, he is so cheery. "); November 28, 1859 ("Goodwin is cutting out a few cords of dead wood in the midst of E. Hubbard's old lot."); March 18, 1857 ("While Emerson sits writing [in] his study this still, overcast, moist day, Goodwin is paddling up the still, dark river. Emerson burns twenty-five cords of wood and fourteen tons of coal; Goodwin perhaps a cord and a half, much of which he picks out of the river.")

They teach us how to die. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! A myriad wrappers for germinating seeds. By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. See October 20. 1853 ("Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind")

Now I should love to get my fuel so, — I have got some so. See October 21, 1857 ("I become a connoisseur in wood at last, take only the best.")

For if I buy one necessary of life, I cheat myself to some extent, I deprive myself of the pleasure, the inexpressible joy, which is the unfailing reward of satisfying any want of our nature simply and truly. See October 21, 1857 ("It is pitiful to see a man of sixty, a philosopher, per chance, inquiring for a bearing apple orchard for sale. If he must have one, why did he not set it out when he was thirty?")

The breath of winter

October 21.

 P. M. — To Mason's pasture. 

The brook between John Flint's house and the river is half frozen over. 

The clump of mountain laurel in Mason's pasture is of a triangular form, about six rods long by a base of two and a third rods, — or seven or eight square rods, — beside some separate clumps. 

It is very cold and blustering to-day. It is the breath of winter, which is encamped not far off to the north. 

A great many shrub oak acorns hold on, and are a darker brown than ever.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1859

The brook between John Flint's house and the river is half frozen over. See November 1, 1858 ("the reflection of Flint’s white house in the river, prolonged by a slight ripple so as to reach the reflected cloud, was a very distinct and luminous light blue.")
The clump of mountain laurel in Mason's pasture is of a triangular form, about six rods long by a base of two and a third rods. See December 13, 1851 ("While surveying to-day, saw much mountain laurel for this neighborhood in Mason's pasture, just over the line in Carlisle. Its bright yellowish-green shoots are agreeable to my eye.")

It is very cold and blustering to-day. See October 15, 1859 ("Standing on this hilltop this cold and blustering day, when dark and slate-colored clouds are flitting over the sky, the beauty of the scenery is enhanced by the contrast in the short intervals of sunshine.")

A great many shrub oak acorns hold on, and are a darker brown than ever. See August 28, 1853 ("The acorns show now on the shrub oaks."); September 13, 1859 ("I see some shrub oak acorns turned dark on the bushes and showing their meridian lines, but generally acorns of all kinds are green yet. "); September 30, 1859 ("Most shrub oak acorns browned."); October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit. The . . .pretty fruit, varying in size, pointedness, and downiness, being now generally turned brown, with light, converging meridional lines. . . .Now is the time for shrub oak acorns."); October 14, 1859 ("The shrub oak acorns are now all fallen, — only one or two left on,")

Lycopodium dendroideum is just shedding pollen.

October 19.

October 19,2 019

C. says that he saw a loon at Walden the 15th. 

P. M.— To Lee's Cliff. 

The tupelo berries have all fallen; how long? 

Alternate cornel about bare. 

Hardhack half bare. 

Many witch-hazel nuts are not yet open. The bushes just bare. 

The slippery elm is nearly bare, like the common near it. 

Cedar berries, how long? 14th at least; probably by the time they lost their leaves. There is one sizable tree west by north of Lee's Cliff, near the wall. 

Lycopodium dendroideum (not variety) is just shedding pollen near this cedar. 

I see asparagus in the woods there near the cedar, four or five feet high! 

Find the seedling archangelica grown about two feet high and still quite green and growing, though the full-grown plants are long since dead, root and stalk. This suggests that no doubt much of the radical spring greenness is of this character, — seedlings of biennials, and perhaps more of them a persistent or late growth from a perennial root, as crowfoot, whiteweed, five-finger, etc. 

The scent of the archangelica root is not agreeable to me. The scent of my fingers after having handled it reminds me strongly of the musquash and woodchuck, though the root itself does not; so its odor must be allied to theirs. 

I find at Lee's Cliff, on the shelves and sides of the rocks, a new fern, apparently Cystopteris fragilis, more than half decayed or withered, though some fresher and shorter fronds at the base of the others are still quite green. It curls up so in my hat that I have difficulty in examining it. It is abundant thereabouts. 

Paddling up the river the other day, those (probably canoe) birches on Mt. Misery on the edge of the hill a mile in front looked like little dark clouds, for I could not distinguish their white trunks against the sky. 

Though the dark-blue, or ripe, creeping juniper berries are chiefly on the lower part of the branches, I see fresh green ones on old wood as big as a pipe-stem and often directly opposite to purple ones (!). They are strangely mixed up. I am not sure but some of this year's berries are already ripe. 

See a black and rusty hedgehog (?) caterpillar in the path.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 19, 1859

The tupelo berries have all fallen. See September 30, 1854 ("I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet. I find that it has borne much fruit — small oval bluish berries, . . .."); October 6, 1858 (“The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves”)

Lycopodium dendroideum (not variety) is just shedding pollen near this cedar.  See September 24, 1857 ("I find the Lycopodium dendroideum, not quite out, just northwest of this pine grove, in the grass. It is not the variety obscurum, which grows at Trillium Wood, is more upright-branched and branches round."); October 12, 1859 ("Now for lycopodiums (the dendroideum not yet apparently in bloom), the dendroideum and lucidulum, etc., — how vivid a green ! — lifting their heads above the moist fallen leaves.") October 17, 1857 ("The Lycopodium lucidulum looks suddenly greener amid the withered leaves."); November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October."); November 17, 1858 ("It would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. "); November 7, 1858 ("I see Lycopodium dendroideum which has not yet shed pollen."); November 11, 1859 ("The flat variety of Lycopodium dendroideum shed pollen on the 25th of October."); November 15, 1858 ("The Lycopodium dendroideum var. obscurum appears to be just in bloom in the swamp about the Hemlocks (the regular one (not variety) is apparently earlier)."); November 17, 1858 ("Lycopodium dendroideum . . .was apparently in its prime yesterday); December 7, 1853 ("In the latter part of November and now, before the snow, I am attracted by the numerous small evergreens on the forest floor, now most conspicuous, especially the very beautiful Lycopodium dendroideum, somewhat cylindrical") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Lycopodium dendroideum,  (now 

Dendrolycopodium dendroideum) ~Wikipedia

C. says that he saw a loon at Walden the 15th. See October 8, 1852 ("As I was paddling along the north shore, after having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly a loon, sailing toward the middle, a few rods in front, set up his wild laugh")

Many witch-hazel nuts are not yet open. The bushes just bare. See October 19, 1856 ("Witch-hazel is in prime, or probably a little past, though some buds are not yet open. Their leaves are all gone.")

Find the seedling archangelica grown about two feet high and still quite green and growing, though the full-grown plants are long since dead. See September 4, 1856 ("Measured an archangelica stem (now of course dry) in Corner Spring Swamp, eight feet eight inches high, and seven and a quarter inches in circumference at ground. It is a somewhat zigzag stem with few joints and a broad umbelliferous top, so that it makes a great show. One of those plants that have their fall early")

The sour scent of decaying ferns

October 18. 

Rains till 3 p. m., but is warmer. 

October 18, 2019

P. M. — To Assabet, front of Tarbell's. 

Going by Dennis Swamp on railroad, the sour scent of decaying ferns is now very strong there. 

Rhus venenata is bare, and maples and some other shrubs, and more are very thin-leaved, as alder and birches, so that the swamp, with so many fallen leaves and migrating sparrows, etc., flitting through it, has a very late look. For falling, put the canoe birch with the small white. The beach plum is almost quite bare. The leaves of a chinquapin oak have not fallen. 

The long, curved, yellowish buds of the Salix discolor begin to show, the leaves falling; even the down has peeped out from under some. 

In the ditch along the west side of Dennis Swamp I see half a dozen yellow-spot turtles moving about. Probably they are preparing to go into winter quarters. 

I see one of the smaller thrushes to-day. 

Saw a tree-toad on the ground in a sandy wood-path. It did not offer to hop away, may have been chilled by the rain (?). It is marked on the back with black, some what in the form of the hylodes. 

Why can we not oftener refresh one another with original thoughts ? If the fragrance of the dicksonia fern is so grateful and suggestive to us, how much more refreshing and encouraging — re-creating — would be fresh and fragrant thoughts communicated to us fresh from a man's experience and life! I want none of his pity, nor sympathy, in the common sense, but that he should emit and communicate to me his essential fragrance, that he should not be forever repenting and going to church (when not otherwise sinning), but, as it were, going a-huckleberrying in the fields of thought, and enrich all the world with his visions and his joys. 

Why do you flee so soon, sir, to the theatres, lecture-rooms, and museums of the city? If you will stay here awhile I will promise you strange sights. You shall walk on water; all these brooks and rivers and ponds shall be your highway. You shall see the whole earth covered a foot or more deep with purest white crystals, in which you slump or over which you glide, and all the trees and stubble glittering in icy armor.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1859


Maples and some other shrubs, and more are very thin-leaved so that the swamp, with so many fallen leaves and migrating sparrows, etc., flitting through it, has a very late look. See October 18, 1853 ("The red maples have been bare a good while. In the sun and this clear air, their bare ashy branches even sparkle like silver."); October 18, 1855 ("The maple swamps, bare of leaves, here and there about the meadow, look like smoke blown along the edge of the woods."); October 18, 1858 ("I am struck by the magical change which has taken place in the red maple swamps, . . . — all their splendor gone, wafted away, as it were, by a puff of wind, and they are the mere ghosts of trees, unnoticed by any, or, if noticed at all, like the smoke that is seen where a blaze is extinguished, ")

The sour scent of decaying ferns is now very strong. See  October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds"); October 2, 1857 ("In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent"); October 2, 1859 ("I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years.")

The long, curved, yellowish buds of the Salix discolor begin to show. See October 25, 1858 ("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.")