October 19
P. M. — To Pine Hill for chestnuts.
P. M. — To Pine Hill for chestnuts.
It is a very pleasant afternoon, quite still and cloudless, with a thick haze concealing the distant hills.
October 19, 2015
Does not this haze mark the Indian summer?
The woods about the
pond are now a perfect October picture; yet there have been no very bright
tints this fall. The young white and the shrub oak leaves were withered before the
frosts came, perhaps by the late drought after the wet spring.
I see at last a
few white pine cones open on the trees, but almost all appear to have fallen.
The chestnuts are scarce and small and apparently have but just begun to open
their burs.
When, returning
at 5 o’clock, I pass the pond in the road, I see the sun, which is about
entering the grosser hazy atmosphere above the western horizon, brilliantly
reflected in the pond, —a dazzling sheen, a bright golden shimmer. His broad
sphere extended stretches the whole length of the pond toward me. In the
extreme distance, I see a few sparkles of the gold on the dark surface; then
begins a regular and solid column of shimmering gold, straight as a rule, but
at one place, where a breeze strikes the surface from one side, it is
remarkably spread or widened, then recovers its straightness again
. . . Of
course, if there were eyes enough to occupy all the east shore, the whole pond would
be seen as one dazzling shimmering lake of melted gold.
I measure the
depth of the needles under the pitch pines east of the railroad (behind the old
shanties), which, as I remember, are about thirty years old. In one place it is
three quarters of an inch in all to the soil, in another one and a quarter, and
in a hollow under a larger pine about four inches. I think the thickness of the
needles, old and new, is not more than one inch there on an average.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal,
October 19, 1855
It is a very pleasant afternoon, quite still and cloudless, with a thick haze concealing the distant hills. Does not this haze mark the Indian summer? See October 20, 1858 (“Another remarkably warm and pleasant day, if not too hot for walking; 74° at 2 P. M. . . .There is a haze between me and the nearest woods, as thick as the thickest in summer.”)
It is a very pleasant afternoon, quite still and cloudless, with a thick haze concealing the distant hills. Does not this haze mark the Indian summer? See October 20, 1858 (“Another remarkably warm and pleasant day, if not too hot for walking; 74° at 2 P. M. . . .There is a haze between me and the nearest woods, as thick as the thickest in summer.”)
To Pine Hill for chestnuts . . . The chestnuts are scarce and small. See October 23, 1855 ("Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders.") See also October 20, 1852 (“Picking chestnuts on Pine Hill."); October 22, 1852 ("Looking over the forest on Pine Hill, I can hardly tell which trees are lit up by the sunshine and which are the yellow chestnut-tops."); October 22, 1857 (" Now is just the time for chestnuts."); October 24, 1857 ("I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts. ")
If there were eyes enough to occupy all the east shore, the whole pond would be seen as one dazzling shimmering lake of melted gold. See June 13, 1851 ("The pyramid or sheaf of light which we see springing from near where we stand is, in fact, only the outline of that portion of the shimmering surface that an eye takes in. If there were as many eyes as angles presented by the waves, covered with those bright flame-like reflections of the moon's disk, the whole surface would appear as bright as the moon . . . flooding it with light."); October 16, 1858 ("In the reflection you have an infinite number of eyes to see for you and report the aspect of things each from its point of view.") See also October 19, 1858 ("At 5 o’clock, the sun just ready to set, I notice that its light on my note-book is quite rosy or purple, though the sun itself and its halo are merely yellow, and there is no purple in the western sky.)
I measure the depth of the needles under the pitch pines. See October 19, 1856 ("The rich sunny yellow of the old pitch pine needles, just ready to fall, contrasting with the new and unmixed masses above, makes a very pleasing impression."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall
The sun reflected
in the pond, a dazzling sheen
of shimmering gold.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A perfect October picture.
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 © 2009-2025
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551019
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