Nature is confident.

October 12. 

October 12, 2018

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

Most exposed button-bushes and black willows are two thirds bare, and the leaves which remain on the former are for the most part brown and shrivelled. The balls stand out bare, ruddy or brown. The coarse grass of the riverside (Phalaris ?) is bleached as white as corn. 

The Cornus sericea begins to fall, though some of it is green; and the C. florida at Island shows some scarlet tints, but it is not much exposed. I believe that this was quite showy at Perth Amboy. 

There are many maple, birch, etc., leaves on the Assabet, in stiller places along the shore, but not yet a leaf harvest. Many swamp white oaks look crisp and brown. 

I land at Pinxter Swamp. The leaves of the azaleas are falling, mostly fallen, and revealing the large blossom-buds, so prepared are they for another year. 

With man all is uncertainty. He does not confidently look forward to another spring. But examine the root of the  savory-leaved aster, and you will find the new shoots, fair purple shoots, which are to curve upward and bear the next year’s flowers, already grown half an inch or more in earth. Nature is confident. 

The river is lower than before this year, or at least since spring, yet not remarkably low, and meadows and pools generally are drier. 

The oak leaves generally are duller than usual this year. I think it must be that they are killed by frost before they are ripe. 

Some small sugar maples are still as fair as ever. You will often see one, large or small, a brilliant and almost uniform scarlet, while another close to it will be perfectly green. 

The Osmunda regalis and some of the small or middle-sized ferns, not evergreens, in and about the swamps, are generally brown and withered, though with green ones intermixed. They are still, however, interesting, with their pale brown or cinnamon-color and decaying scent. 

Hickories are for the most part being rapidly browned and crisp. 

Of the oaks, the white is apparently the most generally red at present. I see a scarlet oak still quite green.

Brakes are fallen in the pastures. They lie flat, still attached to the ground by their stems, and in sandy places they blow about these and describe distinct and perfect circles there. The now fallen dark-brown brake lies on or across the old brake, which fell last year and is quite gray but remarkably conspicuous still. They have fallen in their ranks, as they stood, and lie as it were with a winding-sheet about them. 

Young sweet-fern, where it had been burned in the spring, is quite green. 

Exposed clethra is crisp and brown. 

Some bass trees are quite bare, others but partly. 

The hop hornbeam is in color and falling like the elm. 

Acorns, red and white (especially the first), appear to be fallen or falling. They are so fair and plump and glossy that I love to handle them, and am loath to throw away what I have in my hand. 

I see a squirrel-nest of leaves, made now before the leaves are fallen. 

I have heard of judges, accidentally met at an evening party, discussing the efficacy of the laws and courts, and deciding that, with the aid of the jury system, “substantial justice was done.” But taking those cases in which honest men refrain from going to law, together with those in which men, honest and dishonest, do go to law, I think that the law is really a “humbug,” and a benefit principally to the lawyers.

This town has made a law recently against cattle going at large, and assigned a penalty of five dollars. I am troubled by an Irish neighbor’s cow and horse, and have threatened to have them put in the pound. But a lawyer tells me that these town laws are hard to put through, there are so many quibbles. He never knew the complainant to get his case if the defendant were a-mind to contend. However, the cattle were kept out several days, till a Sunday came, and then they were all in my grounds again, as I heard, but all my neighbors tell me that I cannot have them impounded on that day. Indeed, I observe that very many of my neighbors do for this reason regularly turn their cattle loose on Sundays. 

The judges may discuss the question of the courts and law over their nuts and raisins, and mumble forth the decision that “substantial justice is done,” but I must believe they mean that they do really get paid a “substantial” salary.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 12, 1858


The large blossom-buds, so prepared are they for another year. See January 10, 1856 ("the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of the azalea")

Some bass trees are quite bare. See October 4, 1858 ("The bass is in the prime of its change, a mass of yellow."); October 9, 1853 ("The birch is yellow; the black willow brown; the elms sere, brown, and thin; the bass bare.");    October 13, 1855 ("The maples now stand like smoke along the meadows. The bass is bare"); October 18, 1857 ("The bass and the black ash are completely bare; how long?"); October 19, 1856 ("The bass has lost, apparently, more than half its leaves.")October 22, 1854 ("Bass trees are bare.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

OCTOBER 12, 2018