Look from the high hill, just before sundown, over the pond.

October 22. 

6 A. M. — To Hill. 

October 22, 2017

Ground pretty white with frost. The stiffened and frosted weeds and grass have an aggrieved look. The lately free-flowing blades of grass look now like mourning tresses sculptured stiffly in marble; they lie stiff and disheveled. 

A very narrow strip of ice has formed along the riverside, in which I see a pad or two, wearing the same aggrieved look, like the face of the child that cried for spilt milk, its summer irrevocably gone. 

Going through the stiff meadow-grass, I collect the particles of white frost on the top of my shoes. Under the ash trees their peculiar club-shaped leaf-stems thickly strew the ground. 

The bright tints of autumn are now fairly and generally over. Perhaps the brightest trees I see this moment are some aspens. Large oaks are already generally brown. Reddish brown is the prevailing color of deciduous woods. The swamp white oaks are greener than the rest yet. The black willows along the river are about as bare as in November. The button-bushes are completely, bare, letting in more light to the water, and these days I see on their stems the ribbed reflections of the waves I have made. 

Blackbirds go over, chattering, and a small hawk — pigeon or sparrow - glides along and alights on an elm. 

P. M. — To and round Flint’s Pond. 

Crossing my old bean-field, I see the blue pond between the green white pines in the field and am reminded that we are almost reduced to the russet (i. e. pale-brown grass tinged with red blackberry vines) of such fields as this, the blue of water, the green of pines, and the dull reddish brown of oak leaves. The sight of the blue water between the now perfectly green white pines, seen over the light-brown pasture, is peculiarly Novemberish, though it may be like this in early spring. 

As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing. However, Nature in this may have intended some kindness to the ducks, which are now loitering hereabouts on their migration south ward, mostly young and inexperienced birds, for, as they are feeding [in] Goose Pond, for instance, the rustling of the leaves betrays the approach of the sports man and his dog, or other foe; so perhaps the leaves on the ground protect them more than when on the trees. 

There is scarcely a square rod of sand exposed, in this neighborhood, but you may find on it the stone arrowheads of an extinct race. Far back as that time seems when men went armed with bows and pointed stones here, yet so numerous are the signs of it. The finer particles of sand are blown away and the arrow point remains. The race is as clean gone — from here — as this sand is clean swept by the wind. Such are our antiquities. These were our predecessors. Why, then, make so great ado about the Roman and the Greek, and neglect the Indian? We [need] not wander off with boys in our imaginations to Juan Fernandez, to wonder at footprints in the sand there. Here is a print still more significant at our doors, the print of a race that has preceded us, and this the little symbol that Nature has transmitted to us. Yes, this arrow-headed character is probably more ancient than any other, and to my mind it has not been deciphered. Men should not go to New Zealand to write or think of Greece and Rome, nor more to New England. New earths, new themes expect us. Celebrate not the Garden of Eden, but your own. 

I see what I call a hermit thrush on the bushes by the shore of Flint’s Pond; pretty tame. It has an olive brown back, with a more ferruginous tail, which [is] very narrowly tipped with whitish; an apparently cream-colored throat; and dusky cream-color beneath. The breast is richly spotted with black. The legs are flesh-colored and transparent; the bill black. Yet Wilson says the legs are dusky. Can it be the Turdus olivaceus of Giraud? 

Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts. The white oak generally withers earlier than other large oaks. On the north side of the chestnut oak hill, in the woods, I see a scarlet oak and even a white one, still almost entirely green! The chestnut oak there is also generally green still, some leaves turned yellow-brown and withering so. 

Look from the high hill, just before sundown, over the pond. The mountains are a mere cold slate-color. But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? Even as pines and larches and hemlocks grow in communities in the wilderness, so, it seems, do mountains love society and form a community in the horizon. Though there may be two or more ranges, one behind the other, and ten or twelve miles between them, yet if the farthest are the highest, they are all seen as one group at this distance. I look up northwest toward my mountains, as a farmer to his hill lot or rocky pasture from his door. I drive no cattle to Ipswich hills. -I own no pasture for them there. My eyes it is alone that wander to those blue pastures, which no drought affects. They are my flocks and herds. See how they look. They are shaped like tents, inclining to sharp peaks. What is it lifts them upward so? Why not rest level along the horizon? They seem not perfect, they seem not satisfied, until their central parts have curved upward to a sharp summit. They are a succession of pickets with scallops between. That side my pasture is well fenced. This being their upper side, I fancy they must have a corresponding under side and roots also. Might they not be dug up like a turnip? Perhaps they spring from seeds which some wind sowed. Can’t the Patent Office import some of the seed of Himmaleh with its next rutabagas? Spore of mountains has fallen there; it came from the gills of an agaric. Ah, I am content to dwell there and see the sun go down behind my mountain fence. 

It is just about nine miles, as I walk, from here around Flint’s Pond. The hickory leaves, now after they have fallen, are often if not oftenest a dark rich yellow, very conspicuous upon the brown leaves of the forest floor, seeming to have more life in them than those leaves which are brown. I saw some hickory sprouts above the perfoliate bellwort near the pond, with very large leaves. One of five leafets had the terminal one fourteen inches long by ten and three quarters wide, and the general leaf-stalk was ten and a half inches long. The leaf-stalk commonly adheres to the leaf when fallen, but in the case of the ash, hickory, and probably other compound leaves, it separates from them and by its singular form puzzles the uninitiated. 

What a perfect chest the chestnut is packed in! I now hold a green bur in my hand which, round, must have been two and a quarter inches in diameter, from which three plump nuts have been extracted. It has a straight, stout stem three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, set on strongly and abruptly. It has gaped in four segments or quarters, revealing the thickness of its walls, from five eighths to three quarters of an inch. With such wonderful care Nature has secluded and defended these nuts, as if they were her most precious fruits, while diamonds are left to take care of them selves. 

First it bristles all over with sharp green prickles, some nearly half an inch long, like a hedgehog rolled into a ball; these rest on a thick, stiff, bark-like rind, one sixteenth to one eighth of an inch thick, which, again, is most daintily lined with a kind of silvery fur or velvet plush one sixteenth of an inch thick, even rising in a ridge between the nuts, like the lining of a casket in which the most precious commodities are kept. I see the brown-spotted white cavities where the bases of the nuts have rested and sucked up nour ishment from the stem. The little stars on the top of the nuts are but shorter and feebler spines which mingle with the rest. They stand up close together, three or more, erecting their tiny weapons, as an infant in the brawny arms of its nurse might put out its own tiny hands, to fend off the aggressor. 

There is no waste room. The chest is packed quite full; half-developed nuts are the waste paper used in the packing, to fill the vacancies. At last Frost comes to unlock this chest; it alone holds the true key. Its lids straightway gape open, and the October air rushes in, dries the ripe nuts, and then with a ruder gust shakes them all out in a rattling shower down upon the withered leaves. Such is the cradle, thus daintily lined, in which they have been rocked in their infancy. With what steadiness the nuts must be held within these stout arms, – there can be no motion on their base, — and yet how tenderly, by a firm hold that relaxes only as they grow, the walls that confine them, superfluously strong as they seem, expanding as they grow! 

The chestnut, with its tough shell, looks as if it were able to protect itself, but see how tenderly it has been reared in its cradle before its green and tender skin hardened into a shell. The October air comes in, as I have said, and the light too, and proceed to paint the nuts that clear, handsome reddish (?) brown which we call chestnut. Nowadays the brush that paints chestnuts is very active. It is entering into every open bur over the stretching forests’ tops for hundreds of, miles, without horse or ladder, and putting on rapid coats of this wholesome color. Otherwise the boys would not think they had got perfect nuts. And that this may be further protected, perchance, both within the bur and afterward, the nuts themselves are partly covered toward the top, where they are first exposed, with that same soft velvety down. 

And then Nature drops it on the rustling leaves, a done nut, prepared to begin a chestnut's course again. Within itself, again, each individual nut is lined with a reddish velvet, as if to preserve the seed from jar and injury in falling and, perchance, from sudden damp and cold, and, within that, a thin white skin enwraps the germ. Thus it is lining within lining and unwearied care,—not to count closely, six coverings at least before you reach the contents! 

But it is a barbarous way to jar the tree, and I trust I do repent of it. Gently shake it only, or let the wind shake it for you. You are gratified to find a nut that has in it no bitterness, altogether palatable.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 22, 1857

The sight of the blue water between the now perfectly green white pines, seen over the light-brown pasture, is peculiarly Novemberish, though it may be like this in early spring. See November  14, 1853 (“All waters — the rivers and ponds and swollen brooks — and many new ones are now seen through the leafless trees — are blue reservoirs of dark indigo amid the general russet and reddish-brown and gray.”) ;November 25, 1853 ("There is first the clean light-reflecting russet earth, the dark-blue water, the dark or dingy green evergreens, the dull reddish-brown of young oaks and shrub oaks, the gray of maples and other leafless trees, and the white of birch stems. . . .”); Compare March 12, 1854 ("The scenery is like, yet unlike, November; you have the same barren russet, but now, instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind.”)

As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing. See October 22, 1854 ('Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods."); October 25, 1858 (Now, as you walk in woods, the leaves rustle under your feet as much as ever. In some places you walk pushing a mass before you. "); October 28, 1860 ("We make a great noise going through the fallen leaves in the woods and wood-paths now, so that we cannot hear other sounds. . .”)

A small hawk — pigeon or sparrow - glides along and alights on an elm. October 22, 1855 ("Suddenly a pigeon hawk [Was I sure?] . . .dashing along through the willows and then out and upward high over the meadow in pursuit of a sparrow . . .  What a corsair the hawk is to them!– a little fellow hardly bigger than a quail. "); See also   September 29, 1854 ("Saw two either pigeon or sparrow hawks, apparently male and female, the one much larger than the other.") and A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Hawk (Merlin) or Sparrow Hawk (Kestrel)?

But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? See August 14, 1854(“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”)  Also October 20, 1852 (“Picking chestnuts on Pine Hill. . . . I see the mountains in sunshine, all the more attractive from the cold I feel here, with a tinge of purple on them”)

I see what I call a hermit thrush on the bushes by the shore of Flint’s Pond; pretty tame. . . . Can it be the Turdus olivaceus of Giraud?  See September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”).and note to April 24, 1856 ("Behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches.")

What perfect  mountains

in our northwest horizon

all seen as one group. 

 

 

The hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors.

October 21

First ice that I’ve seen or heard of, a tenth of an inch thick in yard, and the ground is slightly frozen. 

I see many myrtle-birds now about the house this forenoon, on the advent of cooler weather. They keep flying up against the house and the window and fluttering there, as if they would come in, or alight on the wood-pile or pump. They would commonly be mis taken for sparrows, but show more white when they fly, beside the yellow on the rump and sides of breast seen near to and two white bars on the wings. Chubby birds.

P. M. — Up Assabet 
     
Cool and windy. Those who have put it off thus long make haste now to collect what apples were left out and dig their potatoes before the ground shall freeze hard. Now again, as in the spring, we begin to look for sheltered and sunny places where we may sit. 

I see, hanging over an alder bough above the hemlocks, five inches above the water, a great eel, over two feet long and two inches wide or thick horizontally (more vertically) in the forward part of its body. It must weigh two and a half pounds; the biggest I ever saw. What a repulsive and gluttonous-looking creature, with its vomer made to plow the mud and wallow in filth, and its slimy skin (I had forgotten it was scaly, it is so fine). It was somewhat bloated, perhaps, and its skin distended, but at any rate it had got its skin full. It is more repulsive to me than a snake, and I think must be less edible. Its dead-white eye-spots — for the eyes were closed flat on its black and shiny vomer — and the fringed gelatinous kind of alga or what-not that covered like a lichen the parts submerged made it yet more repulsive. 

I cannot go by a large dead swamp white oak log this cool evening, but with no little exertion get it aboard, and some blackened swamp white oak stumps, whose earthy parts are all gone. 

I see a robin eating prinos berries. Is not the robin the principal berry-eating bird nowadays? There must be more about the barberry bushes in Melvin’s Preserve than anywhere. 

October 21, 2017

As I am paddling home swiftly before the northwest wind, absorbed in my wooding, I see, this cool and grayish evening, that peculiar yellow light in the east, from the sun at little before its setting. It has just come out beneath a great cold slate-colored cloud that occupies most of the western sky, as smaller ones the eastern, and now its rays, slanting over the hill in whose shadow I float, fall on the eastern trees and hills with a thin, yellow light like a clear yellow wine, but somehow it reminds me that now the hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors. Before I get home the sun has set and a cold white light in the west succeeded. 

I saw wood tortoises coupled, up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted. 

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? How mean and lazy, to be plucking the fruit of another man’s labor. The old man I saw yesterday lives on peaches and milk in their season, but then he planted them. 

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.

That big swamp white oak limb or tree which I found prostrate in the swamp was longer than my boat and tipped it well. One whole side, the upper, was covered with green hypnum, and the other was partly white with fungi. That green coat adhered when I split it. Immortal wood! that had begun to live again. 

Others burn unfortunate trees that lose their lives prematurely. 

These old stumps stand like anchorites and yogees, putting off their earthy garments, more and more sublimed from year to year, ready to be translated, and then they are ripe for my fire. I administer the last sacrament and purification. I find old pitch pine sticks which have lain in the mud at the bottom of the river, nobody knows how long, and weigh them up, — almost as heavy as lead, – float them home, saw and split them. Their pitch, still fat and yellow, has saved them for me, and they burn like candles at last. 

I become a connoisseur in wood at last, take only the best.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1857

I see many myrtle-birds now.  See October 3, 1859 ("I see on a wall a myrtle-bird in its October dress, looking very much like a small sparrow.");  October 5, 1857 ("The myrtle-bird  . . . only transiently visit us in spring and fall."); October 10, 1859 ("Myrtle-birds (which fly up against side of house and alight on window-sills)"); October 14, 1855 ("The yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird.");  October 15, 1859 ("I think I see myrtle-birds on white birches, and that they are the birds I saw on them a week or two ago, — apparently, or probably, after the birch lice."); October 19, 1856 ("See quite a flock of myrtle-birds . . .They show about three white or light-colored spots when they fly, commonly no bright yellow, though some are pretty bright.")

That peculiar yellow light in the east, from the sun at little before its setting. See October 28, 1852 (“Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.”); October 28, 1857 ("All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me.") See also note to  November 22, 1851 ("The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine . . . After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire.")

I see many myrtle-birds now about the house this forenoon, on the advent of cooler weather. They keep flying up against the house and the window. See October 10, 1859 ("White-throated sparrows in yard and close up to house, together with myrtle-birds (which fly up against side of house and alight on window-sills)"); October 14, 1855 (“One flies up against the house and alights on the window-sill within a foot of me inside. Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt”); October 19, 1856 (“See quite a flock of myrtle-birds, — which I might carelessly have mistaken for slate-colored snowbirds.) and note to  October 28, 1853 ("Little sparrow-sized birds flitting about amid the dry corn stalks and the weeds, — one, quite slaty with black streaks and a bright-yellow crown and rump, which I think is the yellow-crowned warbler,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Myrtle-bird

Now again, as in the spring, we begin to look for sheltered and sunny places where we may sit. See  October 21, 1857 ("somehow it reminds me that now the hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors"); See also October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides . . .where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat."); April 26, 1857 (In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates.”)

Before I get home the sun has set and a cold white light in the west succeeded. See October 20, 1858 ("There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you."); October 25, 1858 (“Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light); October 27, 1858 (“The cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”);  November 10, 1858 ("The warmer colors are now rare. A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them"); November 14, 1853 ("the clear, white, leafless twilight of November”) 

I saw wood tortoises coupled. See  September 15, 1855 ("An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead . . . coupled with another."); November 11, 1859 ("I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)   and A Year in the Life of a Wood Turtle ("In late November. . .you might expect Wood Turtles in Vermont to be hunkered down in their hibernacula. Instead, I spotted 15 Wood Turtles, most of which were active underwater, including two mating pairs.")

Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? . . . how he . . . lived from day to day. See  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.”); October 27, 1857 ("The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art.")

October 21.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 21

Before I get home

the sun has set with a cold

white light in the west.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors

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

tinyurl.com/HDT571021

Clark, Brown, Melvin, and the robins in Easterbrooks Country.

October 20  

October 20, 2017

P. M. – To the Easterbrooks Country. 

I go along the riverside and by Dakin the pumpmaker's. 

There is a very strong northwest wind, Novemberish and cool, raising waves on the river and admonishing to prepare for winter. 

I see two Chenopodium album with stems as bright purple and fair as the poke has been, and the calyx lobes enveloping the seeds the same color. 

Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees. 

I had gone but little way on the old Carlisle road when I saw Brooks Clark, who is now about eighty and bent like a bow, hastening along the road, barefooted, as usual, with an axe in his hand; was in haste perhaps on account of the cold wind on his bare feet. It is he who took the Centinel so long. When he got up to me, I saw that besides the axe in one hand, he had his shoes in the other, filled with knurly apples and a dead robin. He stopped and talked with me a few moments; said that we had had a noble autumn and might now expect some cold weather. I asked if he had found the robin dead. No, he said, he found it with its wing broken and killed it. He also added that he had found some apples in the woods, and as he had n’t anything to carry them in, he put 'em in his shoes. They were queer-looking trays to carry fruit in. How many he got in along toward the toes, I don’t know. I noticed, too, that his pockets were stuffed with them. His old tattered frock coat was hanging in strips about the skirts, as were his pantaloons about his naked feet. He appeared to have been out on a scout this gusty afternoon, to see what he could find, as the youngest boy might. It pleased me to see this cheery old man, with such a feeble hold on life, bent almost double, thus enjoying the evening of his days. Far be it from me to call it avarice or penury, this childlike delight in finding something in the woods or fields and carrying it home in the October evening, as a trophy to be added to his winter's store. Oh, no; he was happy to be Nature's pensioner still, and bird- . like to pick up his living. Better his robin than your turkey, his shoes full of apples than your barrels full; they will be sweeter and suggest a better tale. He can afford to tell how he got them, and we to listen. There is an old wife, too, at home, to share them and hear how they were obtained. Like an old squirrel shuf ling to his hole with a nut. Far less pleasing to me the loaded wain, more suggestive of avarice and of spiritual penury. 

This old man's cheeriness was worth a thousand of the church's sacraments and memento mori's. It was better than a prayerful mood. It proves to me old age as tolerable, as happy, as infancy. I was glad of an occasion to suspect that this afternoon he had not been at “work” but living somewhat after my own fashion (though he did not explain the axe), — had been out to see what nature had for him, and now was hasten ing home to a burrow he knew, where he could warm his old feet. If he had been a young man, he would probably have thrown away his apples and put on his shoes when he saw me coming, for shame. But old age is manlier; it has learned to live, makes fewer apologies, like infancy. This seems a very manly man. I have known him within a few years building stone wall by himself, barefooted. 

I keep along the old Carlisle road. The leaves having mostly fallen, the country now seems deserted, and you feel further from home and more lonely. 

I see where squirrels, apparently, have gnawed the apples left in the road. 

The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them. They must make a principal part of their food now. 

I see the yellowish election-cake fungi. Those large chocolate-colored ones have been burst some days (at least). 

Warren Brown, who owns the Easterbrooks place, the west side the road, is picking barberries. Allows that the soil thereabouts is excellent for fruit, but it is so rocky that he has not patience to plow it. That is the reason this tract is not cultivated. The yellow birches are generally bare. The sassafras in Sted Buttrick's pasture near to E. Hubbard's Wood, nearly so; leaves all withered. Much or most of the fever-bush still green, though somewhat wrinkled." 

There was Melvin, too, a-barberrying and nutting. He had got two baskets, one in each hand, and his game-bag, which hung from his neck, all full of nuts and barberries, and his mouth full of tobacco. Trust him to find where the nuts and berries grow. He is hunting all the year and he marks the bushes and the trees which are fullest, and when the time comes, for once leaves his gun, though not his dog, at home, and takes his baskets to the spot. It is pleasanter to me to meet him with his gun or with his baskets than to meet some portly caterer for a family, basket on arm, at the stalls of Quincy Market. Better Melvin's pignuts than the others' shagbarks. It is to be ob served that the best things are generally most abused, and so are not so much enjoyed as the worst. Shag barks are eaten by epicures with diseased appetites; pignuts by the country boys who gather them. So wood. 

Melvin says he has caught partridges in his hands. If there’s only one hole, knows they’ve not gone out. Sometimes shoots them through the snow. 

What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! 

Not a cultivated, hardly a cultivatable field in it, and yet it delights all natural persons, and feeds more still. Such great rocky and moist tracts, which daunt the farmer, are reckoned as unimproved land, and therefore worth but little; but think of the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit, resorted to by men and beasts; Clark, Brown, Melvin, and the robins, these, at least, were attracted thither this afternoon. 

There are barberry bushes or clumps there, behind which I could actually pick two bushels of berries with out being seen by you on the other side. And they are not a quarter picked at last, by all creatures to gether. I walk for two or three miles, and still the clumps of barberries, great sheaves with their wreaths of scarlet fruit, show themselves before me and on every side, seeming to issue from between the pines or other trees, as if it were they that were promenading there, not I. 

That very dense and handsome maple and pine grove opposite the pond-hole on this old Carlisle road is Ebby Hubbard's. [Sted Buttrick's, according to Melvin.] Melvin says there are those alive who remember mowing there. Hubbard loves to come with his axe in the fall or winter and trim up his woods. 

Melvin tells me that Skinner says he thinks he heard a wildcat scream in E. Hubbard's Wood, by the Close. It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats. They had better look out, or he will skin them, for that seems to have been the trade of his ancestors. How long Nature has manoeuvred to bring our Skinner within ear-shot of that wildcat's scream! Saved Ebby's wood to be the scene of it! Ebby, the wood-saver. 

Melvin says that Sted sold the principal log of one of those pasture oaks to Garty for ten dollars and got several cords besides. What a mean bribe to take the life of so noble a tree! 

Wesson is so gouty that he rarely comes out-of-doors, and is a spectacle in the street; but he loves to tell his old stories still! How, when he was stealing along to get a shot at his ducks, and was just upon them a red squirrel sounded the alarm, chickaree chickaree chickaree, and off they went; but he turned his gun upon the squirrel to avenge himself. 

It would seem as if men generally could better appreciate honesty of the John Beatton stamp, which gives you your due to a mill, than the generosity which habitually throws in the half-cent.

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

Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees. See October 5, 1857 (“I see in most orchards the apples in heaps under the trees, and ladders slanted against their twiggy masses.”)

Yellowish election-cake fungi. See note to October 20, 1856 (“I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter. Some of those spread chocolate-colored ones have many grubs in them, though dry and dusty.")


What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! See June 10, 1853 ("What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?. . . It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s.Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? . . .Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country?")

Apples all gathered.

Only ladders here and there

lean against the trees.

Sunset from the mountain-top.

October 19. 

October 19, 2017 6:09PM

Mr. Sanborn tells me that he looked off from Wachusett last night, and that he saw the shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon. Thought it extended as much as two diameters of the moon on to the sky, in a small cone. This was like the spectre of the Brocken. 

Harris says the crickets produce their shrilling by shuffling their wing-covers together lengthwise. I should have said it was sidewise, or transversely to the insect's length, as I looked down on it. 

You may see these crickets now everywhere in the ruts, as in the cross-road from the Turnpike to the Great Road, creeping along, or oftenest three or four together, absorbed in feeding on, i. e. sucking the juices of, a crushed companion. 

There are two broad ruts made by ox-carts loaded with muck, and a cricket has been crushed or wounded every four or five, feet in each. It is one long slaughter-house. But as often as a cart goes by, the survivors each time return quickly to their seemingly luscious feast. At least two kinds there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 19, 1857

The shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon.See October 20, 1854 ("Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State"); see also October 19, 1856 ("I see Wachusett. How little unevenness and elevation is required for Nature's effects!"); October 19, 1854 ("With a glass you can see vessels in Boston Harbor from the summit.....")

The heavy shadows that began in June take their departure, November being at hand.

October 18. 

October 18 2017

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Clear and pleasant afternoon, but cooler than before.

At the brook beyond Hubbard's Grove, I stand to watch the water-bugs (Gyrinus). The shallow water appears now more than usually clear there, as the weather is cooler, and the shadows of these bugs on the bottom, half a dozen times as big as themselves, are very distinct and interesting, with a narrow and well-defined halo about them. But why are they composed, as it were, of two circles run together, the foremost largest? Is it owing to the manner in which the light falls on their backs, in two spots? You think that the insect must be amused with this pretty shadow. I also see plainly the shadows of ripples they make, which are scarcely perceptible on the surface. 

Many alders and birches just bare. 

I should say that the autumnal change and brightness of foliage began fairly with the red maples (not to speak of a very few premature trees in water) September 25th, and ends this year, say generally October 22d, or maybe two or three days earlier. 

The fall of the leaf, in like way, began fairly with the fall of the red maple leaves, October 13th, and ended at least as early as when the pitch pines had generally fallen, November 5th (the larches are about a week later). The red maples are now fairly bare, though you may occasionally see one full of leaves. 

So gradually the leaves fall, after all,—though individuals will be completely stripped in one short windy rain-storm, - that you scarcely miss them out of the landscape; but the earth grows more bare, and the fields more hoary, and the heavy shadows that began in June take their departure, November being at hand. 

I go along the sunny west side of the Holden wood. 

Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones. They crawl off a little into the bushes, and rest there half-concealed till I am gone. 

The bass and the black ash are completely bare; how long? 

Red cedar is fallen and falling. 

Looking across to the sprout-land beneath the Cliffs, I see that the pale brown of withered oak leaves begins to be conspicuous, amid the red, in sprout-lands. 

In Lee's Wood, white pine leaves are now fairly fallen (not pitch pine yet), — a pleasant, soft, but slippery carpet to walk on. They sometimes spread leafy twigs on floors. Would not these be better? Where the pines stand far apart on grassy pasture hillsides, these tawny patches under each tree contrast singularly with the green around. I see them under one such tree completely and evenly covering and concealing the grass, and more than an inch deep, as they lie lightly. These leaves, like other, broader ones, pass through various hues (or shades) from green to brown, — first yellow, giving the tree that parti-colored look, then pale brown when they fall, then reddish brown after lying on the ground, and then darker and darker brown when decaying. 

I see many robins on barberry bushes, probably after berries. 

The red oaks I see to-day are full of leaves, — a brownish yellow (with more or less green, but no red or scarlet). 

I find an abundance of those small, densely clustered grapes, – not the smallest quite, – still quite fresh and full on green stems, and leaves crisp but not all fallen; so much later than other grapes, which were further advanced October 4th when it was too late to get many. These are not yet ripe and may fairly be called frost grapes. Half-way up Blackberry Steep, above the rock. 

The huckleberries on Conantum appear to have been softened and spoilt by the recent rain, for they are quite thick still on many bushes. Their leaves have fallen. 

So many leaves have now fallen in the woods that a squirrel cannot run after a nut without being heard. 

As I was returning over Hubbard's stump fence pasture, I heard some of the common black field crickets [Acheta abbreviata] (three quarters of an inch long), two or three rods before me, make, as I thought, a peculiar shrilling, like a clear and sharp twittering of birds, that I looked up for some time to see a flock of small birds going over, but they did not arrive. These fellows were, one or two, at the mouth of their burrows, and as I stood over one I saw how he produced the sound, by very slightly lifting his wing-cases (if that is the name of them), and shuffling them (transversely of course) over each other about an eighth of an inch, perhaps three or four times, and then stopping. Thus they stand at the mouths of their burrows, in the warm pastures, near the close of the year, shuffling their wing-cases over each other (the males only), and produce this sharp but pleasant creaking sound, – helping to fetch the year about. 

Thus the sounds of human industry and activity — the roar of cannon, blasting of rocks, whistling of locomotives, rattling of carts, tinkering of artisans, and voices of men - may sound to some distant ear like an earth-song and the creaking of crickets. 

The crickets keep about the mouths of their burrows as if apprehending cold. 

The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1857

And as I come home the sunset sky is white and cold

October 17. 

Saturday. 

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. A great many more ash trees, elms, etc., are bare now. 

October 17, 2021

What a new beauty the blue of the river acquires, seen at a distance in the midst of the various-tinted woods, great masses of red and yellow, etc.! It appears as color, which ordinarily it does not, — elysian. 

The trainers are out with their band of music, and I find my account in it, though I have not subscribed for it. I am walking with a hill between me and the soldiers. I think, perhaps, it will be worth the while to keep within hearing of these strains this afternoon. Yet I hesitate. I am wont to find music unprofitable; it is a luxury. It is surprising, however, that so few habitually intoxicate themselves with music, so many with alcohol. I think, perchance, I may risk it, it will whet my senses so; it will reveal a glory where none was seen before. 

It is remarkable that men too must dress in bright colors and march to music once in the year. Nature, too, assumes her bright hues now, and think you a subtile music may not be heard amid the hills? No doubt these strains do sometimes suggest to Abner, walking behind in his red-streaked pants, an ideal which he had lost sight of, or never perceived. It is remarkable that our institutions can stand before music, it is so revolutionary. 

P. M. — To Clintonia Swamp. 

Glossy-brown white oak acorns strew the ground thickly, many of them sprouted. How soon they have sprouted! I find some quite edible, but they too, like wild apples, require an outdoor appetite. I do not admit their palatableness when I try them in the house. Is not the outdoor appetite the one to be prayed for? 

The cinnamon ferns surrounding the swamp have just lost their leafets, except the terminal ones. They have acquired their November aspect, and the wool now adheres to my clothes as I go through them. The protected ones are not yet bare. 

The dicksonia ferns are killed sere and brown where exposed, but in woods are still pretty green even, only some faded white. They grow in patches. 

The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them. 

The Lycopodium lucidulum looks suddenly greener amid the withered leaves.

It is cooler to-day, and a fire is necessary, which I have not had for about a week. 

October 17, 2014

The mountains are more distinct in the horizon, and as I come home the sunset sky is white and cold; recently it was a warm orange (?) tint.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 17, 1857

It will reveal a glory where none was seen before. See note to January 15, 1857 ("What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? ")

They too, like wild apples, require an outdoor appetite. See October 27, 1855 ("It is remarkable that the wild apples which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields and woods, when brought into the house have a harsh and crabbed taste. To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. "); November 4, 1855 (“It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.”)

The cinnamon ferns surrounding the swamp have. . . acquired their November aspect. See . October 11, 1857 ("The osmunda ferns are generally withered and brown except where very much protected from frost. "); October 15, 1858 ("Cinnamon ferns in Clintonia Swamp are fast losing their leafets) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

The dicksonia ferns are killed sere and brown where exposed, but in woods are still pretty green even, only some faded white. See October 6, 1856 ("A great deal, a great part, of the dicksonia fern at Saw Mill is now whitened or whitening."); October 6, 1858 ("Several species of ferns are faded quite white in the swamp, — dicksonia and another, and some brakes, — for in moist woods and swamps they are preserved longer than in dry places."); October 16, 1857 ("You notice now many faded, almost white dicksonia ferns, and some brakes about as white.")

Small brooks are almost concealed by them. See note to October 17, 1856 ("Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye.")

The mountains are more distinct in the horizon . . .the sunset sky is white and cold. See October 13, 1852 ("The air is singularly fine-grained; the mountains are more distinct from the rest of the earth and slightly purple.");  December 18, 1853 ("The western hills, these bordering it, seen through the clear, cold air, have a hard, distinct edge against the sunset sky.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Mountains in the Horizon

October 17. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 17

Now as I come home

the sunset sky white and cold –

the mountains distinct. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  And as I come home the sunset sky is white and cold

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT-57oct17

How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil!

October 16. 

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

It clears up entirely by noon, having been cloudy in the forenoon, and is as warm as before now. I stop a while at Cheney's shore to hear an incessant musical twittering from a large flock of young goldfinches which have dull-yellow and drab and black plumage, on maples, etc., while the leaves are falling. Young birds can hardly restrain themselves, and if they did not leave us, might perchance burst forth into song in the later Indian summer days.

I see dwarf cornel leaves on the hemlock bank, some green, some bright crimson. 

The onoclea has faded whiter still. 

Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground. 

The large poplar (P. grandidentata) is now at the height of its change, – clear yellow, but many leaves have fallen. 

The ostrya still holds its leaves. It is about the color of the elm at its height. 

I see red oaks now turned various colors, – red-brown or yellow-brown or scarlet-brown, – not commonly bright. 

The swamp white are greener yet. 

Melvin is fishing for pickerel. Thinks this the best day for fishing we have had this long time; just wind enough. Says there are some summer ducks up the stream, the same I saw here the other day. Thinks they are here after acorns. He once caught seven summer ducks by baiting his steel traps with acorns under water. They dove for them, and he caught them by the neck. He saw yesterday a green chestnut bur on the Great Meadows (now bare), fifty rods from the Holt. Could not tell how it came there. 

Am surprised to find an abundance of witch-hazel, now at the height of its change, where S. Wheeler cut off, at the bend of the Assabet. The tallest bushes are bare, though in bloom, but the lowest are full of leaves, many of them green, but chiefly clear and handsome yellow of various shades, from a pale lemon in the shade or within the bush to a darker and warmer yellow with out. Some are even a hue of crimson; some green, with bright yellow along the veins. 

This reminds me that, generally, plants exposed turn early, or not at all, while the same species in the shade of the woods at a much later date assume very pure and delicate tints, as more withdrawn from the light. 

You notice now many faded, almost white dicksonia ferns, and some brakes about as white. 

A great part of the pine-needles have just fallen. See the carpet of pale-brown needles under this pine. How light it lies up on the grass, and that great rock, and the wall, resting thick on its top and its shelves, and on the bushes and underwood, hanging lightly! They are not yet flat and reddish, but a more delicate pale brown, and lie up light as joggle-sticks just dropped. The ground is nearly concealed by them. 

How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. 

The leaves that were floating before the rain have now sunk to the bottom, being wetted above as well as below. 

I see a delicate pale brown-bronze wood frog. I think I can always take them up in my hand. They, too, vary in color, like the leaves of many species of plants at present, having now more yellow, now more red; and perhaps for the same reason. 

I saw some blackbirds, apparently grackles, singing, after their fashion, on a tree by the river. Most had those grayish-brown heads and necks; some, at least, much ferruginous or reddish brown reflected. They were pruning themselves and splitting their throats in vain, trying to sing as the other day. All the melody flew off in splinters.” 

Also a robin sings once or twice, just as in spring! 

I think that the principal stages in the autumnal changes of trees are these, thus far, as I remember, this year: — 

First, there were in September the few prematurely blushing white maples, or blazing red ones in water, that reminded us of October. 

Next, the red maple swamps blazed out in all their glory, attracting the eyes of all travellers and contrasting with other trees. 

And hard upon these came the ash trees and yellowing birches, and walnuts, and elms, and the sprout-land oaks, the last streaking the hillsides far off, often occupying more commanding positions than the maples. All these add their fires to those of the maples. 

But even yet the summer is unconquered. Now the red maple fires are gone out (very few exceptions), and the brightness of those accompanying fires is dulled, their leaves falling; but a general, though duller, fire, yellowish or red, growing more reddish, has seized the masses of the forest, and betrays the paucity of the evergreens, but mingled with it are the delicate tints of aspens, etc., and, beneath, of protected underwoods whose exposed specimens gave us such promise. 

What is acorn-color! Is it not as good as chestnut?”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1857

Also a robin sings once or twice, just as in spring! See October 10, 1853 ("The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring.")

A great part of the pine-needles have just fallen. ... They are not yet flat and reddish, but a more delicate pale brown, and lie up light as joggle-sticks just dropped. See October 16, 1855 ("The freshly fallen needles lay as evenly strewn as if sifted over the whole surface, giving it a uniform neat fawn-color ...  They rest alike on the few green leaves of weeds and the fallen cones and the cobwebs between them, in every direction across one another like joggle-sticks. ")