A hard rain falling. River rising.

November 13.

It has rained hard the 11th, 12th, and 13th, and the river is at last decidedly rising.

On Friday, 10th, it was still at summer level.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1854

These fall rains are a peculiarity of the season.

September 11. 

September 11, 2022

Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head. 

They say our brain at birth is one sixth the weight of the body. 

Cranberries are being raked for fear of frosts. 

These fall rains are a peculiarity of the season. 

How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors.

Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua.

The purple gerardia and blue-curls are interesting for their petals strewn about, beaten down by the rain.

Many a brook I look into is strewn with the purple petals of the gerardia, whose stalk is not obvious in the bank. 

Again the Potentilla Canadensis var. pumila, and dandelions occasionally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1852

Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head. See September 11, 1854 ("It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been. ")

These fall rains are a peculiarity of the season. See August 25, 1852 ("One of those serious and normal storms ~ not a shower which you can see through, not a transient cloud that drops rain ~ something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind."); August 26, 1859 ("The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog-days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinctt"); September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon.");

The Bidens cernua. See September 11, 1851 ("Bidens cernua, or nodding burr marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays) in Heywood Brook, i. e. beggar- tick."); September 12, 1851 ("the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals"); September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, . . . the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds"); September 13, 1852 ("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook."); September 14, 1854 ("The great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory,. . . Full of the sun. It needs a name."); September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Great Bidens

Pretty copious rain in the night.

September 23 

Pretty copious rain in the night. 

11 A. M. — River risen about fourteen inches above lowest this year (or thirteen and three quarters above my mark by boat). 

What an army of non-producers society produces, —, ladies generally (old and young) and gentlemen of leisure, so called! Many think themselves well employed as charitable dispensers of wealth which somebody else earned, and these who produce nothing, being of the most luxurious habits, are precisely they who want the most, and complain loudest when they do not get what they want. 

They who are literally paupers maintained at the public expense are the most importunate and insatiable beggars. They cling like the glutton to a living man and suck his vitals up. 

To every locomotive man there are three or four deadheads clinging to him as if they conferred a great favor on society by living upon it. 

Meanwhile they fill the churches, and die and revive from time to time. They have nothing to do but sin, and repent of their sins. How can you expect such bloodsuckers to be happy?  

Not only foul and poisonous weeds grow in our tracks, but our vileness and luxuriance make simple and wholesome plants rank and weed-like. All that I ever got a premium for was a monstrous squash, so coarse that nobody could eat it. Some of these bad qualities will be found to lurk in the pears that are invented in and about the purlieus of great towns. 

"The evil that men do lives after them." 

The corn and potatoes produced by excessive manuring may be said to have, not only a coarse, but a poisonous, quality. They are made food [for] hogs and oxen too. 

What creatures is the grain raised on the corn-fields of Waterloo food for, unless it be for such as prey upon men? Who cuts the grass in the graveyard? 

I can detect the site of the shanties that have stood all along the railroads by the ranker vegetation. I do not go there for delicate wild-flowers. 

It is important, then, that we should air our lives from time to time by removals, and excursions into the fields and woods, — starve our vices. Do not sit so long over any cellar-hole as to tempt your neighbor to bid for the privilege of digging saltpetre there. 

So live that only the most beautiful wild-flowers will spring up where you have dwelt, — harebells, violets, and blue-eyed grass.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1859

Rainy day.

November 6. 

Yesterday was a still and cloudy day. This is another rainy day. 

On the whole, we have had a good deal of fair weather the last three months. Mr. Buttrick, the marketman, says he has been to Boston twenty-seven times since the first of August, and has not got wet till to-day, though he rides in an open wagon. 

I guessed at Goodwin’s age on the 1st. He is hale and stout and looks younger than he is, and I took care to set him high enough. I guessed he was fifty-five, and he said that if he lived two or three months longer he would be fifty-six.

He then guessed at my age, thought I was forty. 

He thought that Emerson was a very young-looking man for his age, “But,” said he, “he has not been out o’ nights as much as you have.” 

Some horse-chestnuts are still thickly leaved and yellow, not withered.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 6, 1858

I guessed at Goodwin’s age on the 1st. See November 4, 1858 ("On the 1st, when I stood on Poplar Hill, I saw a man. . .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.")

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.") 

Some fear to go to bed, lest the roof be blown off.

October 24. 

Early on Nawshawtuct. 

Black willows bare. Golden willow with yellow leaves. Larch yellow. Most alders by river bare except at top. Waxwork shows red. Celtis almost bare, with greenish-yellow leaves at top. 

Some hickories bare, some with rich golden-brown leaves. Locusts half bare, with greenish-yellow leaves. 

Catnip fresh and green and in bloom. Barberries green, reddish, or scarlet. Cranberry beds at distance in meadows (from hill) are red, for a week or more.

Lombardy poplar yellow. 

Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape. 

White thorns bare, and berries mostly fallen, reddening the ground. 

Hedge-mustard still fresh and in bloom. Button- woods half bare. 

The rock maple leaves a clear yellow; now and then [one] shows some blood in its veins, and blushes. 

People are busy raking the leaves before their houses; some put them over their strawberries. 

It has rained all day, filling the streams. Just after dark, high southerly winds arise, but very warm, blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house. 

It is very dark withal, so that I can hardly find my way to a neighbor's. We think of vessels on the coast, and shipwrecks, and how this will bring down the remaining leaves and to-morrow morning the street will be strewn with rotten limbs of the elms amid the leaves and puddles, and some loose chimney or crazy building will have fallen. Some fear to go to bed, lest the roof be blown off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  October 24, 1853

Some hickories bare, some with rich golden-brown leaves. See October 24, 1858 ("Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least.") and note to October 8, 1856 ("The hickory leaves are among the handsomest now, varying from green through yellow, more or less broadly green-striped on the principal veins, to pure yellow, at first almost lemon-yellow, at last browner and crisped. This mingling of yellow and green on the same leaf, the green next the veins where the life is most persistent, is very pleasing.")


Locusts half bare, with greenish-yellow leaves. See October 22, 1858 ("I see locusts are generally yellow but thinly leaved, and those at extremities. "); October 24, 1858 ("The locusts are bare except the tops,")

Just after dark, high southerly winds shaking the house. See October 17, 1857 ("Very high wind in the night, shaking the house. I feel it taking hold under the eaves, which project at the end of the house, each time with a jerk. Some rain also, and these two bring down the leaves.") and note to November 20, 1857 ("High wind in the night, shaking the house.")

High winds just after dark –

some fear to go to bed lest

the roof be blown off.

The elms are at least half bare.

October 13. 

October 13, 2018

Rain, all day, more or less, which the cloudy and rather still yesterday threatened. 

October 13, 2018

Elm leaves thickly strew the street now and rattle underfoot,—the dark brown pavement. The elms are at least half bare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1858

The elms are at least half bare. See September 29,1854 ("The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen"); October 6 & 7, 1853 ("Windy. Elms bare."); October 10, 1853 ("Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.”); October 12, 1852 ("The elms in the village, losing their leaves, reveal the birds' nests.”); October 17, 1857 (“A great many more ash trees, elms, etc., are bare now.”); October 19, 1856 (“Both the white and black ash are quite bare, and some of the elms there.”); October 26, 1854 ("Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple.”)  See also  October 9, 1857 ("The elms are now at the height of their change. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself")

 

A southeast storm.

September 16. 

When I awake I hear the sound of steady heavy rain.

A southeast storm. 

Our peach tree limbs are broken off by it. It lasts all day, rains a great deal, and scatters many elm boughs and leaves over the street. This wind does damage out of proportion to its strength. The fact is, the trees are unprepared to resist a wind from this quarter and, being loaded with foliage and fruit, suffer so much the more. There will be many windfalls, and fruit [will] be cheap for awhile.

It rained as hard as I remember to have seen it for about five minutes at six o’clock P. M., when I was out, and then suddenly, as it were in an instant, the Wind whirled round to the westward, and clear sky appeared there and the storm ended, — which had lasted all day and part of the previous night. 

All this occurred while I was coming from the post-office. 

The street is strewn with a great many perfectly green leaves, especially of elms, and branches, large and small, also for the most part quite sound. It is remarkable that these tough and slender limbs can be thus twisted off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September, 16, 1858

A southeast storm. The trees are unprepared to resist a wind from this quarter. See September 15, 1858 ("There is a southeast wind, with clouds, and I suspect a storm brewing. It is very rare that the wind blows from this quarter.”) See also March 24, 1860 ("During the year the wind [at Cambridge] was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.")

To feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me.

October 27

October 27, 2017

P. M. — Up river. 

The third day of steady rain; wind northeast. The river has now risen so far over the meadows that I can just cross Hubbard's Great Meadow in my boat. 

Stedman Buttrick tells me that a great many ducks and large yellow-legs have been killed within a day or two. It is rather late for ducks generally. 

He says that the spruce swamp beyond Farmer's is called Fox Castle Swamp and has been a great place for foxes. 

Some days ago he was passing under a black oak on his land, when he saw the dust of acorn shells (or cups?) falling about him. Looking up, he saw as many as twenty (!) striped squirrels busily running out to ends of the twigs, biting off the nuts, running back and taking off the shells (cups?) and stowing the nuts away in their cheeks. 

I go up the river as far as Hubbard's Second Grove, in order to share the general commotion and excitement of the elements, – wind and waves and rain. A half-dozen boats at the landing were full, and the waves beating over them. It was hard work getting at and hauling up and emptying mine. It was a rod and a half from the water's edge. 

Now look out for your rails and other fencing-stuff and loose lumber, lest it be floated off. 

I sail swiftly, standing up and tipping my boat to make a keel of its side, though at first it is hard to keep off a lee-shore. I look for cranberries drifted up on the lee side of the meadows, but see few. It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. 

The reign of water now begins, and how it gambols and revels! Waves are its leaves, foam its blossoms. How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other! Schools of porpoises and blackfish are only more animated waves and have acquired the gait and game of the sea itself. The high wind and the dashing waves are very inspiriting. 

The clumps of that “west of rock” willow and a discolor are still thinly leaved, with peculiar silvery-yellow leaves in this light. 

The rising water is now rolling and washing up the river wreck of sparganium, etc., etc. Wool-grass tops appear thickly above the flood. 

When I turn about, it requires all my strength and skill to push the boat back again. I must keep it pointed directly in the teeth of the wind. If it turns a little, the wind gets the advantage of me and I lose ground. The wind being against the stream makes it rise the faster, and also prevents the driftwood from coming down. How many a meadow my boat’s bottom has rubbed over! I might perhaps consult with it respecting cranberry vines, cut-grass, pitcher-plant, etc., etc. 

I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm. Thus the summer winds up its accounts. 

The Indians, it is said, did not look for winter till the springs were full. Long-continued rain and wind come to settle the accounts of the year, filling the springs for winter. The ducks and other fowl, reminded of the lateness thus, go by. The few remaining leaves come fluttering down. 

The snow-flea (as to-day) is washed out of the bark of meadow trees and covers the surface of the flood. The winter's wood is bargained for and being hauled. This storm reminds men to put things on a winter footing. There is not much more for the farmer to do in the fields. 

The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art. I mean that the very scheme and form of his poetry (so called) is adopted at a sacrifice of vital truth and poetry. Shakespeare has left us his fancies and imaginings, but the truth of his life, with its becoming circumstances, we know nothing about. The writer is reported, the liver not at all. Shakespeare's house! how hollow it is! No man can conceive of Shakespeare in that house. But we want the basis of fact, of an actual life, to complete our Shakespeare, as much as a statue wants its pedestal. A poet's life with this broad actual basis would be as superior to Shakespeare's as a lichen, with its base or thallus, is superior in the order of being to a fungus. 

The Littleton Giant brought us a load of coal within the week. He appears deformed and weakly, though naturally well formed. He does not nearly stand up straight. His knees knock together; they touch when he is standing most upright, and so reduce his height at least three inches. He is also very round-shouldered and stooping, probably from the habit of crouching to conceal his height. He wears a low hat for the same purpose. The tallest man looks like a boy beside him. He has a seat to his wagon made on purpose for him. He habitually stops before all doors. You wonder what his horses think of him, —that a strange horse is not afraid of him. His voice is deep and full, but mild, for he is quite modest and retiring, —really a worthy man, ’t is said. 

Pity he couldn’t have been undertaken by a committee in season and put through, like the boy Safford, been well developed bodily and also mentally, taught to hold up his head and not mind people’s eyes or remarks. It is remarkable that the giants have never correspondingly great hearts.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1857

Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day . . . in this probably annual northeast storm. See October 24, 1858 ("A northeast storm. . .as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over . . This weather warns of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. See April 22, 1857 (“to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us, with their foaming yellowish crests.”) and note to May 8, 1854 (“I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me.”) and A Season for Sailing

The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art. See October 27, 1857 ("Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day.") See also August 28, 1841 ("My life hath been the poem I would have writ,/ But I could not both live and live to utter it."); September 29, 1851 ("The poet writes the history of his body."); December 26, 1855 (“I find in my Journal that the most important events in my life, if recorded at all, are not dated.”)

The Littleton Giant. See January 17, 1852 ("Saw a teamster coming up the Boston road this after noon, sitting on his load, which was bags of corn or salt, apparently, behind two horses and beating his hands for warmth. He finally got off and walked be hind, to make his blood circulate faster, and I saw that he was a large man. But when I came near him, I found that he was a monstrous man and dwarfed all whom he stood by, so that I did not know whether he was large or they were small. Yet, though he stood so high, he stooped considerably, more than anybody I think of, and he wore a flat glazed cap to conceal his height, and when he got into the village he sat down on his bags again. I heard him remark to a boy that it was a cold day, and it was; but I wondered that he should feel the cold so sensibly, for I thought it must take a long time to cool so large a body. I learned that it was Kimball of Littleton, that probably he was not twenty. The family was not large. Wild, who took the census, said so, and that his sister said he couldn't do much, — health and strength not much. It troubled him that he was so large, for people looked at him. There is at once something monstrous, in the bad sense, suggested by the sight of such a man. Great size is inhuman. It is as if a man should be born with the earth attached to him. I saw him standing up on a sled, talking with the driver, while his own team went on ahead; and I supposed from their comparative height that his companion was sitting, but he proved to be standing. Such a man is so much less human; that is what may make him sad.")

 

The seasons and all their changes are in me.

October 26

October 26, 2018

Hard rain in the night and almost steady rain through the day, the second day. Wind still easterly or northeasterly. 

P. M. – Round by Puffer's via Clamshell. 

A driving east or northeast storm. I can see through the drisk only a mile. The river is getting partly over the meadows at last, and my spirits rise with it. Me thinks this rise of the waters must affect every thought and deed in the town. It qualifies my sentence and life. I trust there will appear in this Journal some flow, some gradual filling of the springs and raising of the streams, that the accumulating grists may be ground. 

A storm is a new, and in some respects more active, life in nature. Larger migrating birds make their appearance. They, at least, sympathize with the movements of the watery element and the winds. 

I see two great fish hawks (possibly blue herons) slowly beating northeast against the storm, by what a curious tie circling ever near each other and in the same direction, as if you might expect to find the very motes in the air to be paired; two long undulating wings conveying a feathered body through the misty atmosphere, and this inseparably associated with another planet of the same species. I can just glimpse their undulating lines. Damon and Pythias they must be. The waves beneath, which are of kindred form, are still more social, multitudinous, dvip6aov. 

Where is my mate, beating against the storm with me? They fly according to the valley of the river, northeast or southwest. 

I start up snipes also at Clamshell Meadow. This weather sets the migratory birds in motion and also makes them bolder. 

These regular phenomena of the seasons get at last to be — they were at first, of course — simply and plainly phenomena or phases of my life. The seasons and all their changes are in me.  I see not a dead eel or floating snake, or a gull, but it rounds my life and is like a line or accent in its poem. Almost I believe the Concord would not rise and overflow its banks again, were I not here. After a while I learn what my moods and seasons are. I would have nothing subtracted. I can imagine nothing added. My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. The perfect correspondence of Nature to man, so that he is at home in her! 

Going along the road toward the baeomyces, I see, as I think, a space a yard or two square where the bank has been [burnt] over by accident, by some traveller or sportsman. Even as I stand within four or five feet I take it to be so. It was the fallen leaves of the Salix tristis, thickly covering the ground, so black, with an ashy reflection, that they look exactly like cinders of leaves. And the small twigs were also blackened and inconspicuous; I could hardly detect them. Just the right mingling of black and ash-color. It was a wet day, which made them look blacker.

Mere evergreen mossy banks, as that by this road in the woods, now more attract us when greenness is so rare. 

At the hewing-place on the flat above, many sparrows are flitting past amid the birches and sallows. They are chiefly Fringilla hyemalis. How often they may be  thus flitting along in a straggling manner from bush to bush, so that the hedgerow will be all alive with them, 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. 

The pitch pine leaves not yet quite fallen. 

Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches. 

Those sparrows, too, are thoughts I have. They come and go; they flit by quickly on their migrations, uttering only a faint chip, I know not whither or why exactly. One will not rest upon its twig for me to scrutinize it. The whole copse will be alive with my rambling thoughts, bewildering me by their very multitude, but they will be all gone directly without leaving me a feather. 

My loftiest thought is somewhat like an eagle that suddenly comes into the field of view, suggesting great things and thrilling the beholder, as if it were bound hitherward with a message for me; but it comes no nearer, but circles and soars away, growing dimmer, disappointing me, till it is lost behind a cliff or a cloud. 

Spring is brown; summer, green; autumn, yellow; winter, white; November, gray.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1857

Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches. See note to October 26, 1860 ("This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.”)

The seasons and all their changes are in me . . . My moods are thus periodical, not two days in my year alike. See June 11, 1851 (“Hardly two nights are alike. . . .No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.”); June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. . . . Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”); August 7, 1853 ("The objects I behold correspond to my mood") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

The seasons in me – my moods periodical, not two days alike.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

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 © 2009-2024

The vowel sound in the bleat of a sheep.

October 25.

Rain in night. 

P. M. – By boat to Battle-Ground. 

A rainy day and easterly wind, - an easterly storm.

October 25, 2023

I see flying very high over the meadow, from the east, eleven large birds, leisurely circling a little by the way, surveying the bare meadow. I think they must be fish hawks. 

I am amused to see that Varro tells us that the Latin e represents the vowel sound in the bleat of a sheep (Bee). If he had said in any word pronounced by the Romans we should be not the wiser, but we do not doubt that sheep bleat to-day as they did then. 

The fresh clamshells opened by the musquash begin to be conspicuous.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 25, 1857

I think they must be fish hawks. See October 9, 1853 ("Did we not see a fish hawk? "); November 6, 1854 ("Was that a fish hawk I saw flying over the Assabet, or a goshawk? "); November 17, 1854 ( I think it must have been a fish hawk which I saw ); November 21, 1850 ("I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it.") See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)

The fresh clamshells opened by the musquash begin to be conspicuous. See October 25, 1855 ("The muskrats must now prepare for winter in earnest. I see many places where they have left clamshells recently. ") see also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

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Absorbed in picking chestnuts humming a thought of more significance.

October 24. 

P. M. — To Smith's chestnut grove. 

Rain last night, raising the springs a little. To-day and yesterday still, gray days, but not cold. 

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. 

I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk; more than half under one tree. I believe I get more by resolving, where they are reasonably thick, to pick all under one tree first. Begin at the tree and brush the leaves with your right hand in toward the stump, while your left holds the basket, and so go round and round it in concentric circles, each time laying bare about two feet in width, till you get as far as the boughs extend. You may presume that you have got about all then. It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course you will shake the tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together, as they fell. 

I find on a chestnut tree, while shaking it, fifteen or twenty feet high, on the bark of the trunk, a singular green kind of slug nearly half an inch long . . . and about three sixteenths high from the paper up, narrower on back . . .; a brown mark across middle of back and near tail . . .. It can elongate itself and also run out its head a little from beneath this soft kind of shell. Beneath, quite flat and fleshy-ribbed. Climbs up glass slowly but easily. Reminds me of a green beechnut, but flat-backed. Would hardly suspect it to have life at first sight. Sticks very firmly to the bark or glass; hard to be pushed aside. 

I find one of those small, hard, dark-brown millipede worms partly crawled into a hole in a chestnut. 

I read of an apple tree in this neighborhood that had blossomed again about a week ago. 

I find my account in this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile. My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward, – turn over a new leaf. 

I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1857

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. See October 24, 1855  ("The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, and, half having fallen, look like the reflection of the trees in water lighting up the Common, reflecting light even to the surrounding houses."); October 24, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple . . .have lost the greater part of their leaves.")

Brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile . . . I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. See
November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. . . . The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.")


I hear the dull thump of heavy stones ...far through the rustling wood where boys are ranging for nuts.  See October 24, 1852 ("I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts.")

Concord Bank has suspended.

October 15. 

October 15, 2017

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. 

The springs and rivers have been very low. Millers have not water enough to grind their grists. 

There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather; but hardly yet that touch that brings down the rock maple. The streets are thickly strewn with elm and buttonwood and other leaves, feuille-morte color. 

Some elms and butternuts are quite bare. Yet the sugar maples in our streets are now in their prime and show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints, while some white maples by the river are nearly bare. I see, too, that all locusts did not become crisp and fall before this without acquiring a bright color. In the churchyard they are unwithered, just turning a pale yellow. 

How many plants are either yellow or scarlet! Not only maples, but rose bushes, hazel bushes, etc., etc. Rue is a conspicuous pale yellow for a weed. 

I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus, only his tail-yards visible. He had sunk a well an inch deep, and was even then sinking it, perpendicularly, unconscious of what was going on above. 

The ten days — at least — before this were plainly Indian summer. They were remarkably pleasant and warm. The latter half I sat and slept with an open window, though the first part of the time I had a little fire in the morning. These succeeded to days when you had worn thick clothing and sat by fires for some time. 

Our staghorn sumach has just become a very rich scarlet. So, apparently, has the large one at Mrs. Simmonds's. They are later than the others; a yellower scarlet, almost orange. 

It is another example of the oddity of the Orientals that yellow “is in the east a regal color, more especially so in China, where it is exclusively royal.” (Field on Colors, 139.) Further west it was purple, regal and imperial. 

The river lower this morning than before this year.

Concord Bank has suspended.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1857

Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. See October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather.")

A great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather. See October 15, 1856 ("Large fleets of maple and other leaves. . .came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost. “): October 15, 1853 (“[H]ow the leaves come down in showers after this touch of the frost!.”)

I sat and slept with an open window. See October 10, 1856 (“”These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer. . . . I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night.”); October 31, 1854 ("Sat with open window for a week.”)

The river lower this morning than before this year. See October 15, 1856 (“River lower than for some months. ”)

Concord Bank has suspended. See October 14, 1857 ("Banks built of granite, after some Grecian or Roman style, with their porticoes and their safes of iron, are not so permanent, and cannot give me so good security for capital invested in them, as the heads of withered hardhack in the meadow."); See also Panic of 1857 - Wikipedia

October 15. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October 15

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

 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 ©  2009-2025

This is the way forests are planted.

September 24. 

Thursday. A. M. — Up the Assabet. 

The river is considerably raised and also muddied by the recent rains. 

I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth. He stopped near the foot of a hemlock, and, hastily pawing a hole with his fore feet, dropped the nut, covered it up, and re treated part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments. 

I approached the shore to examine the deposit, and he, descending betrayed no little anxiety for his treasure and made two or three motions to recover the nut before he retreated. Digging there, I found two pignuts joined together, with their green shells on, buried about an inch and a half in the soil, under the red hemlock leaves. 

This, then, is the way forests are planted. This nut must have been brought twenty rods at least and was buried at just the right depth. If the squirrel is killed, or neglects its deposit, a hickory springs up.


P. M. — I walk to that very dense and handsome white pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp. It is about fifteen rods square, the trees large, ten to twenty inches in diameter. It is separated by a wall from another pine wood with a few oaks in it on the south east, and about thirty rods north and west are other pine and oak woods. 

Standing on the edge of the wood and looking through it,—for it is quite level and free from underwood, mostly bare, red-carpeted ground, you would have said that there was not a hardwood tree in it, young or old, though I afterward found on one edge a middling-sized sassafras, a birch, a small tupelo, and two little scarlet oaks, but, what was more interesting, I found, on looking closely over its floor, that, alternating with thin ferns and small blueberry bushes, there was, as often as every five feet, a little oak, three to twelve inches high, and in one place I found a green acorn dropped by the base of a tree. 

I was surprised, I confess, to find my own theory so perfectly proved. These oaks, apparently, find such a locality unfavorable to their growth as long as the pines stand. I saw that some had been browsed by the cows which resort to the wood for shade. As an evidence that hardwood trees would not flourish under those circumstances, I found a red maple twenty five feet high recently prostrated, as if by the wind, but still covered with green leaves, the only maple in the wood, and also two birches decaying in the same position.

The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them. You can hardly enter such a wood but you will hear a red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality.

Minott tells of their finding near a bushel of chestnuts in a rock, when blasting for the mill brook, at that ditch near Flint's Pond. He said it was a gray squirrel's depot. 

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.

H.. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1857

I was surprised, I confess, to find my own theory so perfectly proved. See June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines,  . . .  If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.”) and The succession of forest trees (“If a pine wood is surrounded by a white-oak one chiefly, white-oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut.”)

Now and for a week a good time to collect them. See September 16, 1857 ("On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun.”); October  16, 1855 “(P. M. —To the white pine grove beyond Beck Stow’s. What has got all the cones?”) and note to September 9, 1857 (“To the Hill for white pine cones.”)

Our first fall rain makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.

September 20

Sunday. Another mizzling day. 

P. M. — To beach plums behind A. Clarke’s. 

We walked in some trodden path on account of the wet grass and leaves, but the fine grass overhanging paths, weighed down with dewy rain, wet our feet nevertheless. We cannot afford to omit seeing the beaded grass and wetting our feet. 

This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall. 

Yet there has been no drought the past summer. Vegetation is unusually fresh. Methinks the grass in some shorn meadows is even greener than in the spring. You are soon wet through by the underwood if you enter the woods, — ferns, aralia, huckleberries, etc. 

Went through the lower side of the wood west of Peter’s. 

The early decaying and variegated spotted leaves of the Aralia nudicaulis, which spread out flat and of uniform height some eighteen (?) inches above the forest floor, are very noticeable and interesting in our woods in early autumn, now and for some time. For more than a month it has been changing. 

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. 

The branches of the alternate cornel are spreading and flat, somewhat cyme-like, as its fruit. 

Beach plums are now perfectly ripe and unexpectedly good, as good as an average cultivated plum. I get a handful, dark purple with a bloom, as big as a good-sized grape and but little more oblong, about three quarters of an inch broad and a very little longer. 

I got a handkerchief full of elder-berries, though I am rather late about it, for the birds appear to have greatly thinned the cymes. 

A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there. 

A pitch pine and birch wood is rapidly springing up between the Beck Stow Wood and the soft white pine grove. It is now just high and thick enough to be noticed as a young wood-lot, if not mowed down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1857

First fall rain. See September 20, 1853 (It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer."); September 20, 1854 ("Windy rain-storm last night");   September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon."); September 25, 1860 ("Hard, gusty rain (with thunder and lightning) in afternoon.")

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. See December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.")  See also November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . .The world and my life are simplified. ")

September 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. September 20

Our first fall rain makes 

a dividing line between 

the summer and fall. 

The outlines of trees

 distinct and dark against the 

near misty background.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Our first fall rain

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 © 2009-2024

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