Nature begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter.

October 29. 

In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle! 

6.30 A. M. — Very hard frost these mornings; the grasses, to their finest branches, clothed with it. 

The cat comes stealthily creeping towards some prey amid the withered flowers in the garden, which being disturbed by my approach, she runs low toward it with an unusual glare or superficial light in her eye, ignoring her oldest acquaintance, as wild as her remotest ancestor; and presently I see the first tree sparrow hopping there. I hear them also amid the alders by the river, singing sweetly, —but a few notes. 

Notwithstanding the few handsome scarlet oaks that may yet be found, and the larches and pitch pines and the few thin-leaved Populus grandidentata, the brightness of the foliage, generally speaking, is past. 

P. M. — To Baker Farm, on foot. 

The Salix Torreyana on the right has but few leaves near the extremities (like the S. sericea of the river), and is later to fall than the S. rostrata near by. Its leaves turn merely a brownish yellow, and not scarlet like the cordata, so that it is not allied to that in this respect. (In S. tristis path about Well Meadow Field the S. tristis is mostly fallen or withered on the twigs, and the curled leaves lie thickly like ashes about the bases of the shrubs.) 

Notice the fuzzy black and reddish caterpillars on ground. 

I look north from the causeway at Heywood’s meadow. How rich some scarlet oaks imbosomed in pines, their branches (still bright) intimately intermingled with the pine! They have their full effect there. The pine boughs are the green calyx to its  petals. Without these pines for contrast the autumnal tints would lose a considerable part of their effect. 

The white birches being now generally bare, they stand along the east side of Heywood’s meadow slender, parallel white stems, revealed in a pretty reddish maze produced by their fine branches. It is a lesser and denser smoke (?) than the maple one. The branches must be thick, like those of maples and birches, to give the effect of smoke, and most trees have fewer and coarser branches, or do not grow in such dense masses. 

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle! 

Looking toward Spanish Brook, I see the white pines, a clear green, rising amid and above the pitch pines, which are parti-colored, glowing internally with the warm yellow of the old leaves. Of our Concord evergreens, only the white and pitch pines are interesting in their change, for only their leaves are bright and conspicuous enough. 

I notice a barberry bush in the woods still thickly clothed, but merely thickly clothed, but merely yellowish-green, not showy. Is not this commonly the case with the introduced European plants? Have they not European habits? And are they not also late to fall, killed before they are ripe ?— e. g. the quince, apple, pear(?), barberry, silvery abele, privet, plum(?), white willow, weeping willow, lilac, hawthorn (the horse-chestnut and European mountain-ash are distincter yellow, and the Scotch larch is at least as bright as ours at same time; the Lombardy poplar is a handsome yellow (some branches early), and the cultivated cherry is quite handsome orange, often yellowish), which, with exceptions in parenthesis, are inglorious in their decay. 

As the perfect winged and usually bright-colored insect is but short-lived, so the leaves ripen but to fall. 

I go along the wooded hillside southwest of Spanish Brook. With the fall of the white pine, etc., the Pyrola umbellata and the lycopodiums, and even evergreen ferns, suddenly emerge as from obscurity. If these plants are to be evergreen, how much they require this brown and withered carpet to be spread under them for effect. Now, too, the light is let in to show them. Cold(?)-blooded wood frogs hop about amid the cool ferns and lycopodiums. 

Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know. It must be owing to its height above frosts, for the leaves of sprouts are fallen and withered some time, and of young trees commonly. 

October 29, 1852

Afterwards, when on the Cliff, I perceive that, birches being bare (or as good as bare), one or two poplars — I am not sure which species — take their places on the Shrub Oak Plain, and are brighter than they were, for they hold out to burn longer than the birch.

The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles, and those oak sprout-lands where they glowed are now an almost uniform brown red. Or, strictly speaking, they are pale-brown, mottled with dull red where the small scarlet oak stands.

I find the white pine cones, which have long since opened, hard to come off. 

The thickly fallen leaves make it slippery in the woods, especially climbing hills, as the Cliffs. 

The late wood tortoise and squirrel betrayed. 

Apple trees, though many are thick-leaved, are in the midst of their fall. Our English cherry has fallen. The silvery abele is still densely leaved, and green, or at most a yellowish green. The lilac still thickly leaved; a yellowish green or greenish yellow as the case may be. Privet thickly leaved. yellowish-green. 

If these plants acquire brighter tints in Europe, then one would say that they did not fully ripen their leaves here before they were killed. The orchard trees are not for beauty, but use. English plants have English habits here: they are not yet acclimated; they are early or late as if ours were an English spring or autumn; and no doubt in course of time a change will be produced in their constitutions similar to that which is observed in the English man here.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1858

Notice the fuzzy black and reddish caterpillars on ground. See November 29, 1857 ("One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter."); January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway."); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball.”); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish—brown.”)

How rich some scarlet oaks imbosomed in pines. See  October 26, 1858 ("The scarlet oak generally is not in prime till now, or even later."); October 30, 1855 ("Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks."); October 30, 1858 ("The scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén. See October 31, 1858 ("T o my surprise, the only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand . . . It seemed the obscurest of trees. Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence. . . . It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me, and now the acquaintance thus propitiously formed will, I trust, be permanent."); November 13, 1858 ("Now, on the advent of much colder weather, the last Populus tremuliformis has lost its leaves") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tallest Aspen

The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles. See October 22, 1855("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 26, 1857 (“Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches.”); October 26, 1860 (“The season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.”); October 28, 1854 (“Birches, which began to change and fall so early, are still in many places yellow.”)

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. See November 14, 1853 ("Now for the bare branches of the oak woods, where hawks have nested and owls perched, the sinews of the trees, and the brattling of the wind in their midst. For, now their leaves are off, they've bared their arms, thrown off their coats, and, in the attitude of fencers, await the onset of the wind.")

I find the white pine cones, which have long since opened, hard to come off. See October 13, 1860 ("So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year. This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?)"); October 15, 1855 ("Go to look for white pine cones, but see none.”); October 19, 1855 ("I see at last a few white pine cones open on the trees, but almost all appear to have fallen.")

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