I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
I love very well this cloudy afternoon,
so sober and favorable to reflection
after so many bright ones.
What if the clouds shut out the heavens,
provided they concentrate my thoughts
and make a more celestial heaven below!
I hear the crickets plainer;
I wander less in my thoughts,
am less dissipated;
am aware how shallow
was the current of my thoughts before.
October 12, 1852
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
*****
October 1. Looking west at this hour, the earth is an unvaried, undistinguishable black in contrast with the twilight sky. It is as if you were walking in night up to your chin. There is no wind stirring. An oak tree in Hubbard's pasture stands absolutely motionless and dark against the sky. The crickets sound farther off or fainter at this season, as if they had gone deeper into the sod to avoid the cold. There are no crickets heard on the alders on the causeway. The moon looks colder in the water, though the water-bugs are still active. October 1, 1851
October 2. Since the cooler weather many crickets are seen clustered on warm banks and by sunny wall-sides. October 2, 1857
October 2. Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. I see a cricket feeding on an apple, into which he has eaten so deep that only his posteriors project, but he does not desist a moment though I shake the apple and finally drop it on the ground. October 2, 1859
October 4. See crickets eating the election-cake toadstools. October 4, 1858
October 5. A cricket has eaten out the whole inside of [a puffball] in which he is housed . . .Crickets are seen now moving slowly about in the paths, often with their heads only concealed in a burrow, as if looking out for winter quarters. I saw, on my return, a dozen crickets of various sizes gathered on an apple paring which I had dropped in the path when I came along. October 5, 1856
October 7. 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. October 7, 1857
October 9. I hear the crickets singing loudly in the walls as they have not done (so loudly) for some weeks, while the sun is going down shorn of his rays by the haze. October 9, 1851
October 11. These are cricket days. October 11, 1857
October 14. But few crickets are heard. October 14, 1852
October 15. 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. October 15, 1857
October 18. 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. October 18, 1857
October 18. Hunter's moon. We hike to the moss ledge where we have an open view. It is 8:02 PM, twelve minutes past the peak of the partial eclipse. Crickets are silent. The moon is bright, casting sharp shadows as if daylight; then shines through a moving cloud like a jack-o-lantern cat. The dogs sit and watch the sky. zphx 20131018
October 19. 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. October 19, 1857
October 20. Amid the young pitch pines in the pasture behind 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. October 20, 1856
October 20. The large crickets now swarm in dry paths, each at the mouth of its burrow, as I notice when crossing to Martial Miles’s. October 20, 1858
October 29. As I am picking cranberries below Flint's Bridge, they being drifted against the shore together with much loose meadow wreck, I notice many crickets wrecked with them and half drowned, as well as snails’ shells. Spiders, however, are in their element. October 29, 1857
See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in September
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in October
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 © 2009-2026
