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| October 17, 1858 |
P. M. — Up Assabet.
There are many crisped but colored leaves resting on the smooth surface of the Assabet, which for the most part is not stirred by a breath; but in some places, where the middle is rippled by a slight breeze, no leaves are seen, while the broad and perfectly smooth portions next the shore will be covered with them, as if by a current they were prevented from falling on the other parts. These leaves are chiefly of the red maple, with some white maple, etc. To be sure, they hardly begin to conceal the river, unless in some quiet coves, yet they remind me of ditches in swamps, whose surfaces are often quite concealed by leaves now. The waves made by my boat cause them to rustle, and both by sounds and sights I am reminded that I am in the very midst of the fall.
Methinks the reflections are never purer and more distinct than now at the season of the fall of the leaf, just before the cool twilight has come, when the air has a finer grain. Just as our mental reflections are more distinct at this season of the year, when the evenings grow cool and lengthen and our winter evenings with their brighter fires may be said to begin. And painted ducks, too, often come and sail or float amid the painted leaves.
Cattle are seen these days turned into the river meadows and straying far and wide. They have at length reached those “ pastures new” they dreamed of.
I see one or two large white maples quite bare.
Some late red maples are unexpectedly as fair and bright as ever, both scarlet and yellow, and still distance all competitors. There is no brighter and purer scarlet (often running into crimson) and no softer and clearer yellow than theirs now, though the greater part have quite lost their leaves. The fires I thought dulled, if not put out, a week ago seem to have burst forth again. This accounts for those red maples which were seen to be green while all around them were scarlet. They but bided their time. They were not so easily affected.
I distinguish one large red oak — the most advanced one — from black ones, by its red brown, though some others are yellow-brown and greenish. The large red oaks are about in their prime. Some are a handsome light scarlet, with yellow and green.
The Cornus sericea is a very dark crimson, though it has lost some leaves.
The Salix lucida lower leaves are all fallen (the rest are yellow). So, too, it is the. lower leaves of the willows generally which have fallen first.
Saw a small hawk come flying over the Assabet, which at first I mistook for a dove, though it was smaller. It was blunt or round-shouldered like a dove. It alighted on a small elm and did not mind a wagon passing near by. Seen through my glass twenty rods off, it had a very distinct black head, with apparently a yellowish-brown , breast and beneath and a brown back, — both, however, quite light, — and a yellowish tail with a distinct broad black band at the tip. This I saw when, in pruning itself, it was tilted or flirted up. Could it have been a sparrow hawk?
One reason why I associate perfect reflections from still water with this and a later season may be that now, by the fall of the leaves, so much more light is let in to the water. The river reflects more light, therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were an afterglow.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 17, 1858
There are many crisped but colored leaves resting on the smooth surface of the Assabet,.Methinks the reflections are never purer and more distinct than now at the season of the fall of the leaf. See October 15, 1856 ("The water is very calm and full of reflections. Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet, leaves which apparently came down in a shower with yesterday morning's frost."); October 22,1854 ("Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets”)
The waves made by my boat cause them to rustle. See October 19, 1853 ("The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore, and rustle pleasantly when the wave which the boat creates strikes them."); October 17, 1856 ("Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye."); October 17, 1857 ("The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them")
I see one or two large white maples quite bare. See note to October 14, 1858 ("The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress")
Could it have been a sparrow hawk? See May 4, 1855 (“ I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned")
By the fall of the leaves, so much more light is let in to the water. The river reflects more light, therefore, in this twilight of the year, as it were an afterglow. See August 19, 1853 ("As toward the evening of the day the lakes and streams are smooth, so in the fall, the evening of the year, the waters are smoothed more perfectly than at any other season. The day is an epitome of the year."); August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset."); November 14, 1853 ("October is the month of painted leaves, . . .it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky. . . .This light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November, and what ever more glowing sunset or Indian summer we have then is the afterglow of the year.”)
What an ample share
of the light of heaven each
pond and lake enjoys!
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