ZtonePhruit: A Book of the Seasons: October 27.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

A Book of the Seasons: October 27.

October 27

October 27, 202

October morning

I wake and find it snowing

unexpectedly.

October 27, 1851

The strong northwest wind

blows snow horizontally.

The birds seek shelter.

October 27, 1851

Cold numbs my fingers.

Winter, with its inwardness,

makes one sit to think.

October 27, 1851

Trees nearly all bare,
wind comes cold from the northwest
as if snow were there.
October 27, 1855

Wind comes cold from the

northwest as if there were snow

in that direction.

October 27, 1855

The cool white twilights
of this season – itself the
twilight of the year.
October 27, 1858

Oak seedlings are much

more abundant under pines

than under the oaks.

October 27, 1860

She my morning light

now neither the morning nor

the evening star.

The oftener we

meet the more rapid

our divergence.

Obstacles of heart

are like granite blocks that one

alone cannot move.

October 27, 1851

*****

This morning I wake and find it snowing and the ground covered with snow, quite unexpectedly, for last night it was rainy but not cold. October 27, 1851

The strong northwest wind blows the damp snow along almost horizontally. The birds fly about as if seeking shelter. The cold numbs my fingers. October 27, 1851

The trees are nearly all bare of leaves as well as burs. The wind comes cold from the northwest, as if there were snow on the earth in that direction. October 27, 1855

I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm. October 27, 1857

Winter, with its inwardness, is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think. October 27, 1851

6.30 a. m. — To Island by boat . . . I hear a blackbird in the air; and these, methinks, are song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast. October 27, 1853

I sail swiftly, standing up and tipping my boat to make a keel of its side, though at ﬁrst it is hard to keep off a lee-shore. . . . It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. The reign of water now begins, and how it gambols and revels! Waves are its leaves, foam its blossoms. How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other! Schools of porpoises and blackﬁsh are only more animated waves and have acquired the gait and game of the sea itself. The high wind and the dashing waves are very inspiriting. October 27, 1857

Saw a woodcock feeding, probing the mud with its long bill, under the railroad bridge within two feet of me for a long time. Could not scare it far away. What a disproportionate length of bill! It is a sort of badge they [wear] as a punishment for greediness in a former state. October 27, 1851

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. They must be eaten in the ﬁelds, when your system is all aglow with exercise, the frosty weather nips your ﬁngers (in November), the wind rattles the bare boughs and rustles the leaves, and the jay is heard screaming around. Some of those apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind.” October 27, 1855

As I am coming out of this, looking for seedling oaks, I see a jay, which was screaming at me, fly to a white oak eight or ten rods from the wood in the pasture and directly alight on the ground, pick up an acorn, and fly back into the woods with it. This was one, perhaps the most effectual, way in which this wood was stocked with the numerous little oaks which I saw under that dense white pine grove. Where will you look for a jay sooner than in a dense pine thicket? It is there they commonly live, and build. October 27, 1860

Some less obvious and commonly unobserved signs of the progress of the seasons interest me most, like the loose, dangling catkins of the hop-hornbeam or of the black or yellow birch. I can recall distinctly to my mind the image of these things, and that time in which they flourished is glorious as if it were before the fall of man. I see all nature for the time under this aspect. October 27, 1853

There are many fringed gentians, now considerably frost-bitten, in what was E. Hosmer’s meadow between his dam and the road. October 27, 1855

Larches are yellowing. October 27, 1855

The leaves of the Salix cordata are now generally withered and many more fallen. They are light-brown, and many remain on the twigs, so many that this willow and the tristis I think must be peculiar in this respect as well as its turning scarlet. October 27, 1858

Now it is time to look out for walnuts, last and hardest crop of the year? October 27, 1853

It is high time we came a-nutting, for the nuts have nearly all fallen, and you must depend on what you can ﬁnd on the ground, left by the squirrels, and cannot shake down any more to speak of. October 27, 1855

The colors of the ﬁelds make haste to harmonize with the snowy mantle which is soon to invest them and with the cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year. October 27, 1858

They become more and more the color of the frost which rests on them. October 27, 1858

We have a cool, white sunset, Novemberish, and no redness to warm our thoughts. October 27, 1858