Cool breezy evening with a prolonged white twilight.

September 29

September 29, 2018

P. M. —— To Lee’s Bridge via Mt. Misery and return by Conantum.

Yesterday was quite warm, requiring the thinnest coat. To-day is cooler. 

The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds, — as front of Hubbard’s, — perhaps earlier than usual. 

Bass berries dry and brown. 

Now is the time to gather barberries. 

Looking from the Cliffs, the young oak plain is now probably as brightly colored as it will be. The bright reds appear here to be next the ground, the lower parts of these young trees, and I find on descending that it is commonly so as yet with the scarlet oak, which is the brightest. It is the lower half or two thirds which have changed, and this is surmounted by the slender, still green top. In many cases these leaves have only begun to be sprinkled with bloody spots and stains, — sometimes as if one had cast up a quart of blood from beneath and stained them.

I now see the effect of that long drought on some young oaks, especially black oaks. Their leaves are in many in stances all turned to a clear and uniform brown, having so far lost their vitality, but still plump and full veined and not yet withered. Many are so affected and, of course, show no bright tints. They are hastening to a premature decay. The tops of many young white oaks which had turned are already withered, apparently by frost.

See two either pigeon or sparrow hawks, apparently male and female, the one much larger than the other. 

I see in many places the fallen leaves quite thickly covering the ground in the woods. 

A large flock of crows wandering about and cawing as usual at this season. 

I hear a very pleasant and now unusual strain on the sunny side of an oak wood from many — I think F. hyemalis, though I do not get a clear view of them. Even their slight jingling strain is remarkable at this still season. 

The catbird still mews. 

I see two ducks alternately diving in smooth water near the shore of Fair Haven Pond. Sometimes both are under at once. 

The milkweed down is flying at Clematis Ditch. 

This evening is quite cool and breezy, with a prolonged white twilight, quite Septemberish. 

When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them, they are so simple and remote. Their knowledge is felt to be all terrestrial and to concern the earth alone. It suggests that the same is the case with every object, however familiar; our so-called knowledge of it is equally vulgar and remote. 

One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 29, 1854

Yesterday was quite warm, requiring the thinnest coat.  See September 3, 1852 ("A warm night.  A thin coat sufficient."); September 9, 1851 ("A sultry night; a thin coat is enough."); September 14, 1851 ("A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones."); September 14, 1859 ("When cooler weather and frosts arrive . . . we shift from the shady to the sunny side of the house, and sit there in an extra coat for warmth.") September 28, 1852 ("It has been too cold for the thinnest coat since the middle of September"); October 2, 1852 ("A very warm day after the frosts, so that I wish — though I am afraid to wear — a thin coat")

The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds. See September 28, 1853 ("The elm leaves are falling"); September 28, 1857 ("Had one of those sudden cool gusts, which . . . caused the elms to labor and drop many leaves, early in afternoon."); October 1, 1858 ("The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand.")

Bass berries dry and brown.See September 30, 1859 ("Some acorns (swamp white oak) are browned on the trees, and some bass berries.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Looking from the Cliffs, the young oak plain is now probably as brightly colored as it will be. See September 24, 1854 ("On the shrub oak plain under Cliffs, the young white oaks are generally now tending to a dull inward red. The ilicifolia generally green stil , with a few yellowish or else scarlet leaves. The young black oaks with many red , scarlet , or yellowish leaves."); September 25, 1854 ("On the shrub oak plain, as seen from Cliffs, the red at least balances the green. It looks like a rich, shaggy rug now, before the woods are changed."); October 2, 1852 ("From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples."); October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red, with grayish, withered, apparently white oak leaves intermixed."); January 30, 1853 (" What I have called the Shrub Oak Plain contains comparatively few shrub oaks, — rather, young red and white and, it may be, some scarlet (?).")

Now is the time to gather barberries. See September 29, 1853 ("Barberry ripe.") See also September 28, 1852 ("Children are now gathering barberries, — just the right time.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry

A large flock of crows wandering about and cawing as usual at this season.See September 22, 1860 ("See a large flock of crows."); October 6, 1860 ("The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here."); October 9, 1858 ("Crows fly over and caw at you now.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

The catbird still mews. See September 21, 1854 ("Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher."); September 25, 1855 ("Meanwhile the catbird mews in the alders by my side");September 25, 1858 ("The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly."); October 4, 1857 ("Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint.") 

The milkweed down is flying at Clematis Ditch. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by.") September 24, 1852 ("At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or follicles of the Asclepias Syriaca . . . already bursting . . .How many myriads go sailing away at this season, high over hill and meadow and river, on various tacks until the wind lulls, to plant their race in new localities, who can tell how many miles distant! And for this end these silken streamers have been perfecting all summer, snugly packed in this light chest, — a perfect adaptation to this end, a prophecy not only of the fall but of future springs. Who could believe in prophecies . . .that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?")

This evening is quite cool and breezy, with a prolonged white twilight, quite Septemberish. See August 19, 1853 ("Now, while off Conantum, we have a cool, white, autumnal twilight, and as we pass the Hubbard Bridge, see the first stars."); August 28, 1853 ("A cool, white, autumnal evening."); August 30, 1856 ("A cold white horizon sky in the north, forerunner of the fall of the year."); September 11, 1854 "This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first in these respects decidedly autumnal evening."); October 27, 1858 (“The cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”); November 2, 1853("We come home in the autumn twilight . . . clear white light, which penetrates the woods”); November 14, 1853 ("the clear, white, leafless twilight of November”)

When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them. See November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it."); August 5, 1851 ("The astronomer is as blind to the significant phenomena, or the significance of phenomena . . . The question is not what you look at, but what you see."); February 18, 1852 ("I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds."); January 21, 1853 ("if I am elevated in the least toward the heavens, I do not accept their classification of them. I am not to be distracted by the names which they have imposed. The sun which I know is not Apollo, nor is the evening star Venus. The heavens should be as new, at least, as the world is new . . . Nobody sees the stars now. They study astronomy "); September 29, 1858 ("What astronomer can calculate the orbit of my thistle-down?");  October 4, 1859 ("It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.")

Cool breezy evening

with a prolonged white twilight –

quite Septemberish.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Cool breezy evening 

with a prolonged white twilight.

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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