Absorbed in picking chestnuts humming a thought of more significance.

October 24. 

P. M. — To Smith's chestnut grove. 

Rain last night, raising the springs a little. To-day and yesterday still, gray days, but not cold. 

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. 

I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk; more than half under one tree. I believe I get more by resolving, where they are reasonably thick, to pick all under one tree first. Begin at the tree and brush the leaves with your right hand in toward the stump, while your left holds the basket, and so go round and round it in concentric circles, each time laying bare about two feet in width, till you get as far as the boughs extend. You may presume that you have got about all then. It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course you will shake the tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together, as they fell. 

I find on a chestnut tree, while shaking it, fifteen or twenty feet high, on the bark of the trunk, a singular green kind of slug nearly half an inch long . . . and about three sixteenths high from the paper up, narrower on back . . .; a brown mark across middle of back and near tail . . .. It can elongate itself and also run out its head a little from beneath this soft kind of shell. Beneath, quite flat and fleshy-ribbed. Climbs up glass slowly but easily. Reminds me of a green beechnut, but flat-backed. Would hardly suspect it to have life at first sight. Sticks very firmly to the bark or glass; hard to be pushed aside. 

I find one of those small, hard, dark-brown millipede worms partly crawled into a hole in a chestnut. 

I read of an apple tree in this neighborhood that had blossomed again about a week ago. 

I find my account in this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile. My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward, – turn over a new leaf. 

I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1857

The sugar maple leaves are now falling fast. See October 24, 1855  ("The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, and, half having fallen, look like the reflection of the trees in water lighting up the Common, reflecting light even to the surrounding houses."); October 24, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple . . .have lost the greater part of their leaves.")

Brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile . . . I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. See
November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. . . . The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.")


I hear the dull thump of heavy stones ...far through the rustling wood where boys are ranging for nuts.  See October 24, 1852 ("I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts.")