A sudden and conspicuous fall aspect to the scenery of the river.

September 24

September 24, 2014

6 A. M. — To Hill. Low fog-like veil on meadows. On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups which have held fruit; and I see one or two elliptical but still green berries. Apparently the rest have ripened and fallen or been gathered by birds already, unless they fell prematurely.

Hear the flicker note. See a song-sparrow-like bird singing a confused low jingle. Afterward hear from a willow by river a clear strain from a song sparrow! 

The Viburnum Lentago berries now turn blue-black in pocket, as the nudum did, which last are now all gone, while the Lentago is now just in season.

P. M. —- By boat to Grape Cliff.

These are the stages in the river fall: first, the two varieties of yellow lily pads begin to decay and blacken (long ago); second, the first fall rains come after dog days and raise and cool the river, and winds wash the decaying sparganium, etc., etc., to the shores and clear the channel more or less; third, when the first harder frosts come (as this year the 21st and 22d inst), the button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts.

The first fall is so gradual as not to make much impression, but the last suddenly and conspicuously gives a fall aspect to the scenery of the river. The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. There, where the land appears to lap over the water by a mere edging, these thinner portions are first done brown. 

I float over the still liquid middle. I have not seen any such conspicuous effect of frost as this sudden withering of the button-bushes.

The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort. 

I scare up a duck which circles round four times high in the air a diameter of a. hundred rods, and finally alights with a long, slanting flight near where it rose. The muskrats make haste now to rear their cabins and conceal themselves. I see still what I, take to be small flocks of grackles feeding beneath the covert of the button-bushes and flitting from bush to bush. They seldom expose them-selves long. 

See a warbler which inquisitively approaches me creeper-wise along some dead brush twigs. It may be the pine-creeping warbler, though I see no white bars on wings. I should say all yellow olivaceous above; clear lemon-yellow throat and breast; narrow white ring around eye; black bill, straight; clay-colored legs; edge of wings white.

Young hickories, pretty generally, and some black oaks are frost-bitten, but no young white oaks. On the shrub oak plain under Cliffs, the young white oaks are generally now tending to a dull inward red. The ilicifolia generally green still, with a few yellowish or else scarlet leaves. The young black oaks with many red, scarlet, or yellowish leaves. The chinquapin pretty generally a clear brilliant dark red. The same with a few twigs of the scarlet oak, but not brilliant, i. e. glossy. The tupelo green, reddish, and brilliant scarlet, all together. The brightest hazel dim vermilion. Some red maple sprouts clear scarlet deepening to purplish. The panicled cornel green with a tinge of reddish purple. Only these young trees and bushes are yet conspicuously changed. 

The tupelo and the chinquapin the most brilliant of the above. The scarlet oak the clearest red. 

But little bright Solidago nemorosa is left. It is generally withered or dim. 

September 24, 2024

What name of a natural object is most poetic? That which he has given for convenience, whose life is most nearly related to it, who has known it longest and best.

The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1854

On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups. See September 3, 1856 ("I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. . . methinks, far from palatable.") See also September 28, 1854 ("The sassafras trees on the hill are now wholly a bright orange scarlet as seen from my window, and the small ones elsewhere are also changed.") September 30, 1854 ("I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant.")

Hear the flicker note.  See October 5, 1857 ("The pigeon woodpecker utters his whimsical ah-week ah-week, etc., as in spring. "); December 9, 1858 ("At New Bedford. See a song sparrow and a pigeon woodpecker. ) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Pigeon Woodpecker (flicker)

Hear from a willow by river a clear strain from a song sparrow! September 25, 1854 (" I hear some clear song sparrow strains, as from a fence-post amid snows in early spring. "); September 30, 1854 ("The song sparrow is still about, and the blackbird.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

The button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown. See September 24, 1855 ("The button bushes pretty well browned with frost . . . their pale yellowish season past."); See also September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day . . . the first unquestionable and conspicuous autumnal day, when the willows and button-bushes are a yellowed bower in parallel lines along the swollen and shining stream."); September 20, 1859 ("I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be"); September 20, 1855 ("First decisive frost, killing melons and beans, browning button-bushes and grape leaves.")

The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort. See September 5, 1854 ("This is a fall phenomenon. The river weeds, becoming rotten, though many are still green, fall or are loosened, the water rises, the winds come, and they are drifted to the shore, and the water is cleared."); August 9, 1855 ("River is risen and fuller, and the weeds at bathing-place washed away somewhat. Fall to them.")

The ilicifolia generally green still, with a few yellowish or else scarlet leaves. See October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit."); October 2, 1851 ("The shrub oaks on the terraced plain are now almost uniformly of a deep red"); October 7, 1857 ("Some shrub oaks are yellow, others reddish.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

But little bright Solidago nemorosa is left. It is generally withered or dim. See September 24, 1856 ("S. nemoralis, about done")

What name of a natural object is most poetic? See January 29, 1852 ("The names of plants are for the most part traced to Celtic and Arabian roots.");  August 7, 1853 ("Is it not as language that all natural objects affect the poet? "); March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race."); October 4, 1859 ("I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension . . . you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be."); February 12, 1860 ("Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us."); February 18, 1860 ("A name is at most a mere convenience and carries no information with it . . . the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned. I think, therefore, that the best and most harmless names are those which are an imitation of the voice or note of an animal, or the most poetic ones.")

The perception of truth . . . produces a pleasurable sensation.See February 27, 1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); September 1851 (“There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.”);  April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled.");  August 8, 1852 ("No man ever makes a discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of the fact by a joy that surprises him.”)

September 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 24

Suddenly withered

rich brown button-bushes now

paint the river’s brim.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Suddenly withered

rich brown button-bushes

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-540924