October 7.
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| October 7, 2017 |
P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden.
Little chincapin oaks are partly turned, dull scarlet or yellow as it may happen, nearly in prime, not fallen. Some of their leaves (as well as of the white oak) are gnawed into lace regularly about the edges.
Hornbeam generally green still, but becoming yellowish brown and falling. Black alder still green. Elder is greenish-yellow.
I see some panicled andromeda dark red or crimson. Swamp-pink a dark reddish purple where exposed. Beach plum begins to turn a clear pale yellow in dry places. Sage willow is fairly yellowing and some even falling.
Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there.
I go across Bartonia Meadow direct to Bear Garden Hill-side. Approaching the sand-slide, I see, some fifty rods off, looking toward the sun, the top of the maple swamp just appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the hill, - a strip, apparently twenty rods long and ten feet deep, of the most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits or any tints ever painted. As I advance, lowering the edge of the hill, which makes the firm foreground or lower frame to the picture, the depth of this brilliant grove revealed steadily increases, suggesting that the whole of the concealed valley is filled with such color.
As usual, there is one tree-top of an especially brilliant scarlet, with which the others contrast.
One wonders that the tithing-men and fathers of the town are not out to see what the trees mean by their high colors and exuberance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. I do not see what the Puritans did at that season when the maples blazed out in scarlet. They certainly could not have worshipped in groves then. Perhaps that is what they built meeting-houses and surrounded them with horse-sheds for. No wonder we must have our annual cattle-show and fall training and perhaps Cornwallis, our September courts, etc.
Nature holds her annual fair and gala days in October in every hollow and on every hill side.
Look into that hollow all aglow, where the trees are clothed in their vestures of most dazzling tints. Does it not suggest a thousand gypsies beneath, rows of booths, and that man’s spirits should rise as high, that the routine of his life should be interrupted by an analogous festivity and rejoicing?
It is the reign of crickets now. You see them gliding busily about over all sunny surfaces. They sometimes get into my shoes; but oftener I have to empty out the seeds of various shrubs and weeds which I have been compelled to transport.
Looking toward the sun from Lupine Bank, I see bloody patches of blackberry vines amid the fine hoary and sheeny grass of the pasture. Since the frosts such pastures are already a hoary russet. Some shrub oaks are yellow, others reddish.
When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it at my leisure. I think that Concord affords no better view.
It is always incredibly fair, but ordinarily we are mere objects in it, and not witnesses of it.
I see, through the bright October air, a valley extending southwest and northeast and some two miles across, – so far I can see distinctly, — with a broad, yellow meadow tinged with brown at the bottom, and a blue river winding slowly through it northward, with a regular edging of low bushes on the brink, of the same color with the meadow. Skirting the meadow are straggling lines, and occasionally large masses a quarter of a mile wide, of brilliant scarlet and yellow and crimson trees, backed by and mingled with green forests and green and hoary russet fields and hills; and on the hills around shoot up a million scarlet and orange and yellow and crimson fires amid the green; and here and there amid the trees, often beneath the largest and most graceful of those which have brown-yellow dome-like tops, are bright white or gray houses; and beyond stretches a forest, wreath upon wreath, and between each two wreaths I know lies a similar vale; and far beyond all, on the verge of the horizon, are half a dozen dark-blue mountain-summits.
Large birds of a brilliant blue and white plumage are darting and screaming amid the glowing foliage a quarter of a mile below, while smaller blue birds warble faintly but sweetly around me.
Such is the dwelling-place of man; but go to a caucus in the village to-night or to a church to-morrow, and see if there is anything said to suggest that the inhabitants of those houses know what kind of world they live in. But hark! I hear the tolling of a distant funeral bell, and they are conveying a corpse to the churchyard from one of the houses that I see, and its serious sound is more in harmony with this scenery than any ordinary bustle could be. It suggests that a man must die to his present life before he can appreciate his opportunities and the beauty of the abode that is appointed him.
I do not know how to entertain one who can’t take long walks. The first thing that suggests itself is to get a horse to draw them, and that brings us at once into contact with stablers and dirty harness, and I do not get over my ride for a long time. I give up my forenoon to them and get along pretty well, the very elasticity of the air and promise of the day abetting me, but they are as heavy as dumplings by mid-afternoon. If they can’t walk, why won’t they take an honest nap and let me go in the afternoon? But, come two o'clock, they alarm me by an evident disposition to sit. In the midst of the most glorious Indian-summer afternoon, there they sit, breaking your chairs and wearing out the house, with their backs to the light, taking no note of the lapse of time.
As I sat on the high bank at the east end of Walden this afternoon, at five o’clock, I saw, by a peculiar intention or dividing of the eye, a very striking subaqueous rainbow-like phenomenon. A passer-by might, perhaps would, have noticed that the bright-tinted shrubs about the high shore on the sunny side were reflected from the water; but, unless on the alert for such effects, he would have failed to perceive the full beauty of the phenomenon.
Unless you look for reflections, you commonly will not find them. Those brilliant shrubs, which were from three to a dozen feet in height, were all reflected, dimly so far as the details of leaves, etc., were concerned, but brightly as to color, and, of course, in the order in which they stood, - scarlet, yellow, green, etc.; but, there being a slight ripple on the surface, these reflections were not true to their height though true to their breadth, but were extended downward with mathematical perpendicularity, three or four times too far, forming sharp pyramids of the several colors, gradually reduced to mere dusky points. The effect of this prolongation of the reflection was a very pleasing softening and blending of the colors, especially when a small bush of one bright tint stood directly before another of a contrary and equally bright tint. It was just as if you were to brush firmly aside with your hand or a brush a fresh line of paint of various colors, or so many lumps of friable colored powders. There was, accordingly, a sort of belt, as wide as the whole height of the hill, extending downward along the whole north or sunny side of the pond, composed of exceedingly short and narrow inverted pyramids of the most brilliant colors intermixed. I have seen, indeed, similar inverted pyramids in the old drawings of tattooing about the waists of the aborigines of this country.
Walden, too, like an Indian maiden, wears this broad rainbow-like belt of brilliant colored points or cones round her waist in October. The color seems to be reflected and re-reflected from ripple to ripple, losing brightness each time by the softest possible gradation, and tapering toward the beholder, since he occupies a mere point of view. This is one of the prettiest effects of the autumnal change.
The harvest of leaves is at hand in some valleys, and generally the young deciduous trees on hillsides have the brilliant tint of ripe fruits. Already many windfalls strew the ground under the maples and elms, etc. I see one or two maple shrubs quite bare, while many large maples are still quite green.
In that rainbow belt we have color, which is commonly so rare and precious and confined to precious stones, in the utmost profusion. The ripples convey the reflection toward us, till all the color is winnowed out and spilled between them and only the dusky points reach near to this side where we stand. It is as if a broad belt (or waist-cloth) of sharp and narrow inverted cones or pyramids of bright colors, softly blended like fairy worsted work, their bases rising to a line mathematically level about the waist of the pond. That fall river Indian, like the Almouchicois generally, wore a belt of hollow tubes.
It was strange that only the funeral bell was in harmony with that scene, while other sounds were too frivolous and trivial, as if only through the gate of death would man come to appreciate his opportunities and the beauty of the world he has abused. In proportion as death is more earnest than life, it is better than life.
The sun set just before I reached the railroad causeway on my return, but then there was not a cloud to be seen in the horizon. Coming through the Irish field, the mountains were purple, much redder than a grape.
. . .
[July 24, 1857 Moosehead Lake "he commenced a slow, somewhat nasal, yet musical chant, in his own language" ] That simple and mild nasal chant affected me like the dawn of civilization to the wilderness. I thought of “Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind,” etc. There is always a slight haze or mist on the brow of the Indian. The white man’s brow is clear and distinct. It is eleven o’clock in the forenoon with him. It is four o'clock in the morning with the Indian.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 7, 1857
I see looking toward the sun the top of the maple swamp just appearing over the hill, - a strip of the most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits or any tints ever painted. See
October 7, 1852 (“Now is the time to behold the maple swamps, one mass of red and yellow, all on fire, as it were; ”)
When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape. . . I think that Concord affords no better view. See May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”);
May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”);
March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. “);.
July 21, 1856 ("This has been a peculiarly fine afternoon. When I looked about casually, was surprised at the fairness of the landscape") See also
February 21, 1855 (“I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests”)
We take an afternoon walk to the view and return via the double chair not stopping there. It rained earlier. We hear crickets the whole time if we listen. At the view the sound of jay’s screaming and, just as we leave, a raven in a nearby tree. The sky is cloudy and it looks like twilight all afternoon. Just before we leave the whole lake to the south is illuminated yellow. There are no fresh leaves on the trail and generally there is no color in the woods or overlooking the valley. It seems late this year. Hiking to the double chair the understory of striped maples is bright yellow; a single branch of a red small red maple is in full color. An owl hoots beyond the middle pond. We arrive at the lower view just as the sun sets to the south in the trees– the air is full of moisture and is glowing orange over Shelburne pond and beyond.
Zphx 20171007
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