October 20
Agreeable to me is the scent of the withered and decaying leaves and pads, pontederias, on each side as I paddle up the river this still cloudy day, with the faint twittering or chirping of a sparrow still amid the bare button-bushes. It is the scent of the year, passing away like a decaying fungus, but leaving a rich mould, I trust.
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| October 20, 2015 |
P. M. — To Nawshawtuct.
. . .
I see on the dead top of a hickory, twittering very much like swallows, eighteen and more bluebirds, perhaps preparing to migrate.
I have collected and split up now quite a pile of driftwood, – rails and riders and stems and stumps of trees, – perhaps half or three quarters of a tree. It is more amusing not only to collect this with my boat and bring [it] up from the river on my back, but to split it also, than it would be to speak to a farmer for a load of wood and to saw and split that.
Each stick I deal with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its history . . . Thus one half the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy.
Some of my acquaintances have been wondering why I took all this pains, bringing some nearly three miles by water and have suggested various reasons for it. I tell them in my despair of making them understand me that it is a profound secret, – which it has proved, – yet I did hint to them that one reason was that I wanted to get it.
I take some satisfaction in eating my food, as well as in being nourished by it. I feel well at dinner-time as well as after it . . . I enjoy more drinking water at a clear spring than out of a goblet at a gentleman's table. I like best the bread which I have baked, the garment which I have made, the shelter which I have constructed, the fuel which I have gathered.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1855
Agreeable to me is the scent of the withered and decaying leaves It is the scent of the year, passing away but leaving a rich mould, See October 20, 1853 ("How beautiful they go to their graves! — painted of a thousand hues. . . .They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay."); See also October 22, 1853 (" Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed upon the earth. . . .This annual decay and death, this dying by inches, before the whole tree at last lies down and turns to soil. . . .They teach us how to die. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! . . .By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. The ground is all parti-colored with them. For beautiful variety can any crop be compared with them?"); October 17, 1857 (" How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! ")
Eighteen and more bluebirds, perhaps preparing to migrate. See October 1, 1853 ("Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about."); October 4, 1859 (' The birds seem to delight in these first fine days of the fall, in the warm, hazy light, — robins, bluebirds (in families on the almost bare elms), phcebes, and probably purple finches. . . .I hear half-strains from many of them, as the song sparrow, bluebird, etc., and the sweet phe-be of the chickadee.”); October 10, 1851 ("The air this morning is full of bluebirds, and again it is spring."); November 3, 1853 ("Heard a bluebird about a week ago.") See also October 22, 1853 (" One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — . . . thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably"); November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season.")
Agreeable to me
the scent of the withered leaves –
the year, passing away.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025
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