It has come to this, – that the lover of art is one, and the lover of nature another.

October 9. 

P. M. – To Dugan Desert and Ministerial Swamp.

The elms are now at the height of their change. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself, and we might expect to find some maturity and flavor in the thoughts of the villagers at last. 

Under those light-rustling yellow piles, just ready to fall on the heads of the walker, how can any crudity or greenness of thought or act prevail? The street is a great harvest-home. It would be worth the while to set out these trees, if only for their autumnal value. 

Think of these great yellow canopies or parasols held over our heads and houses by the mile together, making the village all one and compact, an ulmarium. And then how gently and unobserved they drop their burdens and let in the sun when it is wanted, their leaves not heard when they fall on our roofs and in our streets.

I see the traveller driving into the village under its canopy of elm-tops, with his crop, as into a great granary or barn-yard. I am tempted to go thither as to a husking of thoughts, now dry and ripe and ready to be separated from their integuments, but I foresee that it will be chiefly husks and little thought, blasted pig-corn, fit only for cob-meal. 

Is there, then, indeed, no thought under this ample husk of conversation and manners? There is the sermon husk, the lecture husk, and the book husk, and are they all only good to make mats of and tread under foot? 

Looking from railroad bridge, birches are perhaps at the height of their change now; hickories are about the color of elms or a little browner; balm-of-Gileads, about as birches; many ash trees are a mere finely divided dull-reddish color; swamp white oaks are green, yellow, and brown, much less ripe than elms, not much yellowed yet. 

Under the pines by the Clamshell, that fine purple grass is now withered and faded to a very light brown which reflects the autumnal light. Patches of rabbit's clover amid the blackberry vines are now quite hoary if not silvery. I thought it a mass of Aster Tradescanti at first, but they are not so common. Many plants, like them, remind you by their color of the frosts. 

Sprout-lands, with their oaks, chestnuts, etc., etc., are now at their height of color. 

From Lupine Hill, not only the maples, etc., have acquired brighter tints at this season, but the pines, by contrast, appear to have acquired a new and more liquid green, and to some extent this is true, — where their old leaves have chiefly fallen, which is not yet generally the case, however. 

I see now that, near the river and low on the meadows, the maple stands with paled fires, burned out, thin-leaved, a salmon or faint cherry tint, ready to surrender to the first smart frost. 

It has come to this, – that the lover of art is one, and the lover of nature another, though true art is but the expression of our love of nature. It is monstrous when one cares but little about trees but much about Corinthian columns, and yet this is exceedingly common. 

Scarlet oaks have fairly begun to blaze, — especially their lower limbs, – in low places which have from green through dull crimson to dull scarlet. 

Going along the mill road, the common shrub oaks make a dull-red or salmon impression in the mass at a little distance, from which brighter scarlet oaks stand out. 

On F. Wheeler's clearing, over the swamp, many shrub oak leaves fallen, laying bare the acorns, which are browned. Many leaves already thickly strew the dry, sandy ground. 

In the swamp, some twenty-foot maples are already bare, and some white pines are as yellow as birches. The spruces appear unchanged, even close at hand, though many leaves have fallen and are falling. The Viburnum nudum in the swamp is a clear handsome crimson. The young cherry yellow, with a faint cherry tinge. The mulberry is browned and falling, though it is but slightly tinged with yellow. 

I see an Irishman digging mud at Harrington's mud-hole. He digs it out rapidly, — a hole four feet wide by eight long, — leaving a water-tight partition, eighteen or twenty inches wide, on two sides next the water. At three feet it is clear white sand, whiter than common sand-hills. Why? Why is there no stain of vegetation in it? It requires some skill to save much of the partition at last. This man first pares off the top nearly to the level of the water, then, standing on it, digs it away as the water rushes in, - though it fills it before he has got a foot, — and he thus saves about half its depth. No doubt his work is the more amusing for requiring this exercise of thought. 

Saw a jay stealing corn from a stack in a field.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1857

Is there, then, indeed, no thought under this ample husk of conversation and manners? See August 7, 1854 ("How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character?”); January 30, 1854 ("It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of his brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. Then is the great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars…")