Counting rings of the stumps of a primitive wood cut in the last century

October 29.

P. M. – To Eb. Hubbard’s old black birch bill.

Henry Shattuck’s is a new pitch pine wood, say thirty years old.

The western, or greater, part contains not a single seed-bearing white pine.

It is a remarkable proof of my theory, for it contains thousands of little white pines but scarcely one little pitch pine. It is also well stocked with minute oak seedlings.

It is a dense wood, say a dozen rods wide by three or four times as long, running east and west, with an oak wood on the north, from which the squirrels brought the acorns.

A strip of nearly the same width of the pitch pine was cut apparently within a year on the south (a part of the above), and has just been harrowed and sown with rye, and still it is all dotted over with the little oak seedlings between the stumps, which are perhaps unnoticed by Shattuck, but if he would keep his plow and fire out he would still have a pretty green patch there by next fall.

A thousand little red flags (changed oak leaves) already wave over the green rye amid the stumps.

The farmer stumbles over these in his walk, and sweats while he endeavors to clear the land of them, and yet wonders how oaks ever succeed to pines, as if he did not consider what these are.

Where these pines are dense they are slender and tall.

On the edge or in open land they are more stout and spreading.

Again, as day before yesterday, sitting on the edge of a pine wood, I see a jay fly to a white oak half a dozen rods off in the pasture, and, gathering an acorn from the ground, hammer away at it under its foot on a limb of the oak, with an awkward and rapid seesaw or teetering motion, it has to lift its head so high to acquire the requisite momentum. The jays scold about almost every white oak tree, since we hinder their coming to it.

At some of the white oaks visited on the 11th, where the acorns were so thick on the ground and trees, I now find them perhaps nearly half picked up, yet perhaps little more than two thirds spoiled.

The good appear to be all sprouted now.

There are certainly many more sound ones here than at Beck Stow’s and Hubbard’s Grove, and it looks as if the injury had been done by frost, but perhaps some of it was done by the very heavy rains of September alone.

Yesterday and to-day I have walked rapidly through extensive chestnut woods without seeing what I thought was a seedling chestnut, yet I can soon find them in our Concord pines a quarter or half a mile from the chestnut woods.

Several have expressed their surprise to me that they cannot find a seedling chestnut to transplant.  I think that it is with them precisely as with the oaks; not only a seedling is more difficult to distinguish in a chestnut wood, but it is really far more rare there than in the adjacent pine, mixed, and oak woods.

After considerable experience in searching for these and seedling oaks, I have learned to neglect the chestnut and oak woods and go only to the neighboring woods of a different species for them. Only that course will pay.

On the side of E. Hubbard’s hill I see an old chestnut stump some two feet in diameter and nearly two feet high, and its outside and form well kept, yet all the inside gone; and from this shot up four sprouts in a square around it, which were cut down seven or eight years ago.

Their rings number forty-six, and they are quite sound, so that the old stump was cut some fifty-three years ago. This is the oldest stump of whose age I am certain.

Hence I have no doubt that there are many stumps left in this town which were cut in the last century.

I am surprised to find on this hill (cut some seven or eight years ago) many remarkably old stumps wonderfully preserved, especially on the north side the hill, — walnuts, white oak and other oaks, and black birch.

One white oak is eighteen and a half inches in diameter and has one hundred and forty-three rings. This is very one-sided in its growth, the centre being just four inches from the north side, or thirty - six rings to an inch. Of course I counted the other side.

Another, close by, gave one hundred and forty-one rings, another white oak fifteen and a half inches in diameter had one hundred and fifty-five rings. It has so smooth (sawed off) and solid, almost a polished or marble- ike, surface that I could not at first tell what kind of wood it was.

Another white oak the same as last in rings, i. e. one hundred and fifty-five, twenty-four inches in  diameter. All these were sound to the very core, so that I could see the first circles, and I suspect that they were seedlings.

The smaller, but oldest ones had grown very slowly at first, and yet more slowly at last, but after some sixty five years they had then grown much faster for about fifteen years, and then grew slower and slower to the last. The rings were exceedingly close together near the outside, yet not proportionably difficult to count.

For aught that appeared, they might have continued to grow a century longer.

The stumps are far apart, so that this formed an open grove, and that probably made the wood sounder and more durable.

On the south slope many white pines had been cut about forty-six years ago, or when the chestnut was, amid the oaks. I suppose that these were seedlings, and perhaps the hill was cleared soon after the settlement of the town, and after a while pines sprang up in the open land, and seedling oaks under the pines, and, the latter being cut near the end of the seventeenth century, those oaks sprang up, with or without pines, but all but these were cut down when they were about sixty years old.

If these are seedlings, then seedlings make much the best timber.

I should say that the pasture oaks generally must be seedlings on account of their age, being part of the primitive wood.

I suspect that sprouts, like the chestnut, for example, may grow very rapidly, and make large trees in comparatively few years, but they will be decaying [?] as fast at the core as they are growing at the circumference.  The stumps of chestnuts, especially sprouts are very shaky. 

It is with men as with trees; you must grow slowly to last long.


The oldest of these oaks began their existence about 1697.  I doubt if there were any as old trees in our primitive wood as stood in this town fifty years ago.

The healthiest of the primitive wood, having at length more room, light, and air, probably grew larger than its ancestors.

Some of the black birch stumps gave about one hundred rings.

The pasture oak which Sted Buttrick cut some seven or eight years ago, northeast of this, was, as near as I could tell, — one third was calculation, — some one hundred years old only, though larger than any of these.

The fine chips which are left on the centre of a large stump preserve it moist there, and rapidly hasten its decay.

The site of the last - named pasture oak was easily discovered, by a very large open grass - sward where no sweet - fern, lambkill, huckleberry, and brakes grew, as they did almost everywhere else.

This may be because of the cattle assembling under the oak, and so killing the bushes and at the same time manuring the ground for grass.

There is more chestnut in the northern part of the town than I was aware of.

The first large wood north of Ponkawtasset is oak and chestnut. East of my house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1860

It is a remarkable proof of my theory, for it contains thousands of little white pines . stocked with minute oak seedlings. See September 24, 1857("You would have said that there was not a hardwood tree in it, young or old, though I afterward found . . . on looking closely over its floor, that, . . .there was, as often as every five feet, a little oak, three to twelve inches high, and in one place I found a green acorn dropped by the base of a tree. I was surprised, I confess, to find my own theory so perfectly proved."); June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines, . . . If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.”) and The Succession of Forest Trees (“If a pine wood is surrounded by a white-oak one chiefly, white-oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut.”)

It is with men as with trees; you must grow slowly to last long. See November 5, 1860 ("Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to an extreme old age.  This wood is a hundred to a hundred and sixty years old.”);   July 19, 1851 (“Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those of nature; I am differently timed. . . . If my curve is large, why bend it to a smaller circle?”)

As day before yesterday, sitting on the edge of a pine wood, I see a jay fly to a white oak half a dozen rods off in the pasture, and, gathering an acorn from the ground, hammer away at it under its foot on a limb of the oak See October 27, 1860 (“I see a jay, which was screaming at me, fly to a white oak eight or ten rods from the wood in the pasture and directly alight on the ground, pick up an acorn, and fly back into the woods with it. This was one, perhaps the most effectual, way in which this wood was stocked with the numerous little oaks which I saw under that dense white pine grove.”) ;  The Succession of Forest Trees (“I can confirm what William Bart ram wrote to Wilson, the ornithologist, that " The jay is one of the most useful agents in the economy of nature, for disseminating forest trees"”) 

A library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

October 28

Rain in the night and this morning, preparing for winter.

We noticed in a great many places the narrow paths by which the moose came down to the river, and sometimes, where the bank was steep and somewhat clayey, they had slid down it.  The holes made by their feet in the soft bottom in shallow water are visible for a long time.

Joe told me that, though they shed their horns annually, each new pair has an additional prong. They are sometimes used as an ornament in front entries, for a hat-tree (to hang hats on).

Cedar bark appeared to be their commonest string.

These first beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting, — these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls, - if they only carry a few cords of wood across the lake. 

***

April 28, 1855 ("A a bird of many colors")

Just saw in the garden, in the drizzling rain, little sparrow-sized birds flitting about amid the dry corn stalks and the weeds, — one, quite slaty with black streaks and a bright-yellow crown and rump, which I think is the yellow-crowned warbler, but most of the others much more brown, with yellowish breasts and no yellow on crown to be observed, which I think the young of the same.

One flew up fifteen feet and caught an insect. They uttered a faint chip. Some of the rest were sparrows. I did not get good sight of the last. I suspect the former may be my tull-lulls of the Moosehead Carry. [No they were.] 

For a year or two past, my publisher, falsely so called, has been writing from time to time to ask what disposition should be made of the copies of "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" still on hand, and at last suggesting that he had use for the room they occupied in his cellar.

So I had them all sent to me here, and they have arrived to-day by express, filling the man's wagon, — 706 copies out of an edition of 1000 which I bought of Munroe four years ago and have been ever since paying for, and have not quite paid for yet. The wares are sent to me at last, and I have an opportunity to examine my purchase. 

They are something more substantial than fame, as my back knows, which has borne them up two flights of stairs to a place similar to that to which they trace their origin.

Of the remaining two hundred and ninety and odd, seventy-five were given away, the rest sold.

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself. Is it not well that the author should behold the fruits of his labor? My works are piled up on one side of my chamber half as high as my head, my opera omnia.

This is authorship; these are the work of my brain.

There was just one piece of good luck in the venture. The unbound were tied up by the printer four years ago in stout paper wrappers, and inscribed, —

H. D. Thoreau's 

Concord River 

50 cops. 

So Munroe had only to cross out 'River’ and write 'Mass.' and deliver them to the expressman at once.

I can see now what I write for, the result of my labors.

Nevertheless, in spite of this result, sitting beside the inert mass of my works, I take up my pen to-night to record what thought or experience I may have had, with as much satisfaction as ever.

Indeed, I believe that this result is more inspiring and better for me than if a thousand had bought my wares. It affects my privacy less and leaves me freer. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 28, 1853 

The yellow-crowned warbler, . . .my tull-lulls of the Moosehead Carry. [Probably the yellow-rumped warbler.]  See  April 28, 1855 ("The myrtle-birds flit before us in great numbers, yet quite tame, uttering commonly only a chip, but some times a short trill or che che, che che, che che. Do I hear the tull-lull in the afternoon? It is a bird of many colors, — slate, yellow, black, and white, — singularly spotted."); October 3, 1859 ("I see on a wall a myrtle-bird in its October dress, looking very much like a small sparrow."); October 10, 1859 ("White-throated sparrows in yard and close up to house, together with myrtle-birds (which fly up against side of house and alight on window-sills)");  October 14, 1855 ("Some sparrow-like birds with yellow on rump flitting about our wood-pile. One flies up against the house and alights on the window-sill within a foot of me inside. Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black, edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt. "); October 15, 1859 ("I think I see myrtle-birds on white birches, and that they are the birds I saw on them a week or two ago, — apparently, or probably, after the birch lice."); October 19, 1856 ("See quite a flock of myrtle-birds, — which I might carelessly have mistaken for slate-colored snowbirds, — flitting about on the rocky hillside under Conantum Cliff. They show about three white or light-colored spots when they fly, commonly no bright yellow, though some are pretty bright."); October 21, 1857 ("I see many myrtle-birds now about the house this forenoon, on the advent of cooler weather. They keep flying up against the house and the window and fluttering there, as if they would come in, or alight on the wood-pile or pump. They would commonly be mistaken for sparrows, but show more white when they fly, beside the yellow on the rump and sides of breast seen near to and two white bars on the wings."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Myrtle-bird; A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, Birds in the Rain

Obstacles of the Heart

October 27

She who was

as the morning light to me

is now neither the morning star

nor the evening star.

We meet but to find

each other further asunder

and the oftener we meet

the more rapid our divergence.

So a star of the first magnitude

pales in the heavens –

not from any fault in the observer's eye

nor from any fault in itself 

but because its progress

in its own system

has put a greater

distance between.

The obstacles of the heart 

are like granite blocks

one alone cannot move.

The obstacles which the heart meets with are like granite blocks which one alone cannot move. She who was as the morning light to me is now neither the morning star nor the evening star. We meet but to find each other further asunder, and the oftener we meet the more rapid our divergence. So a star of the first magnitude pales in the heavens, not from any fault in the observer's eye nor from any fault in itself, perchance, but because its progress in its own system has put a greater distance between.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1851 

See also December 15, 1841 ("I know of no redeeming qualities in me but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I have to fall back on to this ground . . . My love is invulnerable. Meet me on that ground, and you will find me strong.");A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Farewell my friend

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Obstacles of the Heart

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

https://tinyurl.com/HDTheart

To Baker’s old chestnut lot near Flint’s Pond

October 26. 

P. M. – To Baker’s old chestnut lot near Flint’s Pond.

As I go through what was formerly the dense pitch pine lot on Thrush Alley (G. Hubbard’s), I observe that the present growth is scrub oak, birch, oaks of various kinds, white pines, pitch pines, willows, and poplars. Apparently, the birch, oaks, and pitch pines are the oldest of the trees.

From the number of small white pines in the neighboring pitch pine wood, I should have expected to find larger and also more white pines here. It will finally become a mixed wood of oak and white and pitch pine.

There is much cladonia in the lot. 

Observed yesterday that the row of white pines set along the fence on the west side of Sleepy Hollow had grown very fast, apparently from about the time they were set out, or the last three years. Several had made grow the fastest at just this age, or after they get to be about five feet high? 

I see to-day sprouts from chestnut stumps which are two and a half feet in diameter (i. e. the stumps). One of these large stumps is cut quite low and hollowing, so as to hold water as well as leaves, and the leaves prevent the water from drying up. It is evident that in such a case the stump rots sooner than if high and roof like. 

I remember that there were a great many hickories with R. W. E.’s pitch pines when I lived there, but now there are but few comparatively, and they appear to have died down several times and come up again from the root. I suppose it is mainly on account of frosts, though perhaps the fires have done part of it.

Are not hickories most commonly found on hills? There are a few hickories in the open land which I once cultivated there, and these may have been planted there by birds or squirrels. It must be more than thirty-five years since there was wood there. 

I find little white pines under the pitch pines (of E.), near the pond end, and few or no little pitch pines, but between here and the road about as many of one as of the other, but the old pines are much less dense that way, or not dense at all. 

This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches. 

It was a mistake for Britton to treat that Fox Hollow lot as he did. I remember a large old pine and chestnut wood there some twenty years ago . He came and cut it off and burned it over, and ever since it has been good for nothing. I mean that acre at the bottom of the hollow.

It is now one of those frosty hollows so common in Walden Woods, where little grows, sheep’s fescue grass, sweet-fern, hazelnut bushes, and oak scrubs whose dead tops are two or three feet high, while the still living shoots are not more than half as high at their base. They have lingered so long and died down annually.

At length I see a few birches and pines creeping into it, which at this rate in the course of a dozen years more will suggest a forest there.

Was this wise? 

Examined the stumps in the Baker chestnut lot which was cut when I surveyed it in the spring of’52.  They were when cut commonly from fifty to sixty years old (some older, some younger).

The sprouts from them are from three to six inches thick, and may average-the largest — four inches, and eighteen feet high. The wood is perhaps near half oak sprouts, and these are one and a half to four inches thick, or average two and a half, and not so high as the chestnut.

Some of the largest chestnut stumps have sent up no sprout, yet others equally large and very much more decayed have sent up sprouts. Can this be owing to the different time when they were cut? The cutting was after April.

The largest sprouts I chanced to notice were from a small stump in low ground. Some hemlock stumps there had a hundred rings.

Was overtaken by a sudden thunder-shower.

Cut a chestnut sprout two years old. It grew about five and a half feet the first year and three and a half the next, and was an inch in diameter. The tops of these sprouts, the last few inches, had died in the winter, so that a side bud continued them, and this made a slight curve in the sprout, thus: There was on a cross-section, of course, but one ring of pores within the wood, just outside the large pith, the diameter of the first year’s growth being just half an inch, radius a fourth of an inch.

The thickness of the second year’s growth was the same, or one fourth, but it was distinctly marked to the naked eye with about seven concentric lighter lines, which, I suppose, marked so many successive growths or waves of growth, or seasons in its year.

These were not visible through a microscope of considerable power, but best to the naked eye.

Probably you could tell a seedling chestnut from a vigorous sprout, however old or large, provided the heart were perfectly sound to the pith, by the much more rapid growth of the last the first half-dozen years of its existence. 

There are scarcely any chestnuts this year near Britton’s, but I find as many as usual east of Flint’s Pond. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1860

It was a mistake for Britton to treat that Fox Hollow lot as he did. He came and cut it off and burned it over, and ever since it has been good for nothing. See  October 16, 1860 (" I have come up here this afternoon to see the dense white pine lot beyond the pond, . . .To my surprise and chagrin, I find that the fellow who calls himself its owner has burned it all over and sowed winter-rye here.. . .He needs to have a guardian placed over him. A forest-warden should be appointed by the town. Overseers of poor husbandmen.")

Probably you could tell a seedling chestnut from a vigorous sprout, however old or large, by the much more rapid growth of the last the first half-dozen years of its existence. See November 6, 1857 ("seventy years ago . . .there was a large old chestnut by the roadside there, which being cut, two sprouts came up which have become the largest chestnut trees by the wall now.")

There are scarcely any chestnuts this year near Britton’s, but I find as many as usual east of Flint’s Pond. See August 14, 1856 ("All the Flint's Pond wood-paths are strewn with these gay-spotted chestnut leaves") October 18, 1856 ("A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop . . ."); October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts."); October 23, 1855 ("Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders."); December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left         the trunks on the snow.")

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

Now the abundance of dead weeds.

 

October 21.

Thursday P.M. To Second Division Brook and Ministerial Swamp.

Cerastium.

Apparently some flowers yield to the frosts, others linger here and there till the snow buries them.

Saw that the side flowering skull-cap was killed by the frost. If they grow in some nook out of the way of frosts they last so much the longer. Methinks the frost puts a period to a large class.

The goldenrods, being dead, are now a dingy white along the brooks (white fuzz dark brown leaves), together with rusty, fuzzy trumpet-weeds and asters in the same condition.

This is a remarkable feature in the landscape now the abundance of dead weeds. The frosts have done it. Winter comes on gradually.

The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first.

All the country over the frosts have come and seared the tenderer herbs along all brook sides. How unobserved this change until it has taken place.

The birds that fly at the approach of winter are come from the north.

Some time since I might have said some birds are leaving us, others, like ducks, are just arriving from the north, the herbs are withering along the brooks, the humming insects are going into winter quarters.

The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year from June 1st to October 1st perhaps.

Polygonum articulaium lingers still.

Silvery cinquefoil, hedge-mustard, and clover.

I find caddis cases with worms in Second Division Brook.

And what mean those little piles of yellow sand on dark colored stones at the bottom of the swift running water kept together and in place by some kind of gluten and looking as if sprinkled on the stones one eighteenth of an inch in diameter.

These caddis worms just build a little case around themselves and sometimes attach a few dead leaves to disguise it and then fasten it slightly to some swaying grass stem or blade at the bottom in swift water and these are their quarters till next spring .

This reminds me that winter does not put his rude fingers in the bottom of the brooks.

When you look into the brooks you see various dead leaves floating or resting on the bottom and you do not suspect that some are the disguises which the caddis worms have borrowed.

Fresh Baeomyces roseus near Tommy Wheeler's.

The cotton woolly aphides on the alders.

Gilpin speaks of floats of timber on the river Wey in 1775 as picturesque objects. Thus in the oldest settled and civilized country there is a resemblance or reminiscence still of the primitive new country, and more or less timber never ceases to grow on the head waters of its streams and perchance the wild muskrat still perforates its banks. England may endure as long as she grows oaks for her navy. Timber rafts still annually come down the Rhine, like the Mississippi and St Lawrence. But the forests of England are thin for Gilpin says of the Isle of Wight in Charles II's time, "There were woods in the island so complete and extensive that it is said a squirrel might have travelled in several parts many leagues together on the tops of the trees."

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 21, 1852

Fresh Baeomyces roseus near Tommy Wheeler's. See April 3, 1859 ("We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests "pink mould" Perhaps "pink shot" or "eggs" would do.")

The cotton woolly aphides on the alders. See September 22, 1852 ("Large woolly aphides are now clustered close together on the alder stems") See also June 14, 1853 ("I observed the cotton of aphides on the alders yesterday and to-day. ");  October 29, 1855 ("I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders."); May 19, 1856 ("Woolly aphides on alder. "); November 10, 1858 ("Aphides on alder."); June 4, 1860 (Aphides on alders, which dirty your clothes with their wool as you walk."")

The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first. See October 21, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are in the midst of their fall to-day.")

The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year. See October 28, 1852 ("Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June 1st to October 1st, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn.")

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

October 18.

Up river to Bittern Cliff.

October 18, 2020

 (avesong)

A mild still but cloudy or rather misty afternoon,

The water is at present perfectly smooth and calm but covered with a kind of smoky or hazy film.

Nevertheless the reflections of distant woods though less distinct are softer seen through this smoky and darkened atmosphere.

I speak only of the reflections as seen in the broader bays and longer reaches of the river as at the Willow End.

The general impression made by the river landscape now is that of bareness and bleakness the black willow not yet the golden and the button bush having lost almost all their leaves the latter perhaps all and the last is covered with the fuzzy mikania blossoms gone to seed a dirty white.

There are a very few polygonums hydropiperaides and perhaps the unknown rose tinted one but most have withered before the frosts.

The vegetation of the immediate shore and the water is for the most part black and withered.

A few muskrat houses are going up abrupt and precipitous on one side sloped on the other I distinguish the dark moist layer of weeds deposited last night on what had dried in the sun,

The tall bulrush and the wool grass are dry and yellow except a few in deep water but the rainbow rush Juncus militaris is still green.

The autumnal tints though less brilliant and striking are perhaps quite as agreeable now that the frosts have somewhat dulled and softened them.

Now that the forest is universally imbrowned they make a more harmonious impression.

Wooded hillsides reflected in the water are particularly agreeable.

The undulation which the boat creates gives them the appearance of being terraced.

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.

Saw two or three ducks which fly up before and alight far behind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 18, 1852

Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter. See  October 14, 1852 ("Jays and chickadees are oftener heard in the fall than in summer."); October 20, 1856 (" Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . .we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs.");  November 3, 1858 ("The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter; A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The Blue Jay

The pines, too, have fallen.

October 16.

October 16, 2014

In the streets the ash and most of the elm trees are bare of leaves; the red maples also for the most part, apparently, at a distance. 

The pines, too, have fallen.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 16, 1854

The ash and most of the elm trees are bare of leaves; the red maples also. See October 13, 1858 ("The elms are at least half bare. "); October 15, 1859 ("The ash trees I see to-day are quite bare,"); October 17, 1857 (“A great many more ash trees, elms, etc., are bare now.”); October 19, 1856 (“Both the white and black ash are quite bare, and some of the elms there.”); October 24, 1853 ("Red maples and elms alone very conspicuously bare in our landscape"); October 26, 1854 ("Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple.")

The pines, too, have fallen. See October 16, 1855 ("How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground!"); October 16, 1857 ("A great part of the pine-needles have just fallen.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

Fine, clear Indian-summer weather.

October 14.

Friday.

A Mr. Farquhar of Maryland came to see me; spent the day and the night.

Fine, clear Indian-summer weather.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1853

Fine, clear Indian-summer. See October 14, 1857 ("Another, the tenth of these memorable days . . .
It is indeed a golden autumn. These ten days are enough to make the reputation of any climate."); October 14, 1859 ("A fine Indian-summer day. The 6th and 10th were quite cool, and any particularly warm days since may be called Indian summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

October 13.

October 13, 2021

Drizzling, misty showers still, with a little misty sunshine at intervals.

The trees have lost many of their leaves in the last twenty-four hours.

The sun has got so low that it will do to let his rays in on the earth; the cattle do not need their shade now, nor men. Warmth is more desirable now than shade.

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

• In summer the animal and vegetable in him are perfected as in a torrid zone; he lives in his senses mainly.
• In winter cold reason and not warm passion has her sway; he lives in thought and reflection; he lives a more spiritual, a less sensual, life.
• If he has passed a merely sensual summer, he passes his winter in a torpid state like some reptiles and other animals.
• The mind of man in the two seasons is like the atmosphere of summer compared with the atmosphere of winter.
• He depends more on himself in winter, — on his own resources, — less on outward aid.
• Insects, it is true, disappear for the most part, and those animals which depend upon them; but the nobler animals abide with man the severity of winter.
• He migrates into his mind, to perpetual summer.
• And to the healthy man the winter of his discontent never comes.

Mr. Pratt told me that Jonas? Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately near Beck Stow's swamp with twenty-five pounds of honey in it, in the top of a maple tree which was blown down.

There is now a large swarm in the meeting-house chimney, in a flue not used.

Many swarms have gone off that have not been heard from.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1851

Man in winter. See December 8, 1850 ( "The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!"); October 27, 1851 ("The cold numbs my fingers. Winter, with its inwardness, is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think."); January 17, 1852 ("In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer ") April 1, 1852 ("We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky. It is a good experience to have gone through with."); January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars."); December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, . . . is as it was designed and made to be.")

Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately. See February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees,. . .. Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey."); September 30, 1852 ("custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree "). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

October 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

Here is one shaped just like a hand or a mitten with a thumb.

October 11.

October 11, 2020

Sassafras leaves are a rich yellow now and falling fast. They come down in showers on the least touching of the tree. I was obliged to cut a small one while surveying the Bedford road to-day. What singularly and variously formed leaves! For the most part three very regular long lobes, but also some simple leaves; but here is one shaped just like a hand or a mitten with a thumb. They next turn a dark cream color.

Father saw to-day in the end of a red oak stick in his wood-shed, three and a half inches in diameter, which was sawed yesterday, something shining.  It is lead, either the side of a bullet or a large buckshot just a quarter of an inch in diameter. It came from the Ministerial Lot in the southwest part of the town, and we bought the wood of Martial Miles. 

It is completely and snugly buried under some twelve or fifteen layers of the wood, and it appears not to have penetrated originally more than its own thickness, for there is a very close fit all around it, and the wood has closed over it very snugly and soundly, while on every other side it is killed, though snug for an eighth of an inch around it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 11, 1853

Sassafras leaves are a rich yellow. See September 30, 1854 ("I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant.")

While surveying the Bedford road to-day. October 8, 1853 ("Surveying on the new Bedford road to-day,"); July 1, 1858 (“I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal.”); May 3, 1859 ('Surveying the Bedford road.")

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall.

October 10. 

October 10, 2020

Burdock, Ranunculus acris, rough hawk-weed.

A drizzling rain to-day.

The air is full of falling leaves. The streets are strewn with elm leaves. The trees begin to look thin. The butternut is perhaps the first on the street to lose its leaves.

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall.

Glow-worms in the evening.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1852

Ranunculus acris. See June 15, 1851 ("I see the tall crowfoot now in the meadows ( Ranunculus acris ) , with a smooth stem ."); August 21, 1851 ("Ranunculus acris (tall crowfoot) still."); October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow, ...”)

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall. See October 24, 1855 ("The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind."); October 24, 1858 ("This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. ")

Fall flowers

 October 9.

Self-heal (Prunella vulgaris)

 

Touch-me-not, self-heal, Bidens cernua, ladies'-tresses, cerastium, dwarf tree-primrose, butter and-eggs (abundant), prenanthes, sium, silvery cinque-foil, mayweed.

My rainbow rush must be the Juncus militaris, not yet colored.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1852

Touch-me-not. See August 15, 1851 ("Impatiens, noli-me-tangere, or touch-me-not, with its dangling yellow pitchers or horns of plenty, which I have seen for a month by damp causeway thickets"); September 27, 1852 ("The touch-me-not seed-vessels go off like pistols, — shoot their seeds off like bullets. They explode in my hat.")

Self-heal, Prunella vulgaris; Gerard said "there is not a better wounde herbe in the world.'" See August 18, 1853 ("The sound of so many insects and the sight of so many flowers affect us so, — the creak of the cricket and the sight of the prunella and autumnal dandelion. They say, "For the night cometh in which no man may work."") See also June 9, 1853 ("Prunella out."); June 15 , 1851 ("The prunella too is in blossom "); July 16, 1851 ("The prunella sends back a blue ray from under my feet as I walk."); July 17, 1852 ("At evening the prunellas in the grass like the sky glow purple, which were blue all day. ")

Bidens cernua. See September 12, 1851 ("the Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals"); September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, . . . the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds"); September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed."); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens ,or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside.")

Ladies'-tresses. See August 20, 1851 ("The neottia, or ladies'-tresses),

Cerastium. See October 4, 1853 ("The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, so hoary, looks as if the frost still lay on it. Well it wears the frost."); November 16, 1852 ("At Lee's Cliff the Cerastium viscosum.")

Silvery cinque-foil. See October 9, 1851 ("The hoary cinquefoil in blossom.") See also  October 2, 1857 ("There is a more or less general reddening of the leaves at this season, down to the cinquefoil and mouse-ear, sorrel and strawberry under our feet.")

Mayweed. See September 14, 1856 ("Mayweed! what a misnomer! Call it rut-weed rather."); October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow, ...”); October 20, 1852 ("Canada snapdragon, tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. ")

My rainbow rush must be the Juncus militaris. See August 30, 1858 ("The Juncus militaris has been long out of bloom. . . .This is my rainbow rush."); October 27, 1858 ("Though a single stalk would not attract attention, when seen in the mass they have this singular effect. I call it, therefore, the rainbow rush. When, moreover, you see it reflected in the water, the effect is very much increased.")

The artic three-toed woodpecker.

October 8.

P. M. – To Damon's wood-lot, part of the burnt district of the spring.

Am surprised to see how green the forest floor and the sprout-land north of Damon's lot are already again, though it was a very severe burn.

In the wood-lot the trees are apparently killed for twenty feet up, especially the smaller, then six or ten feet of green top, while very vigorous sprouts have shot up from the base below the influence of the fire. This shows that they will die, I think.

The top has merely lived for the season while the growth has been in their sprouts around the base. This is the case with oaks, maples, cherry, etc.

Also the blueberry (Vaccinium vacillans) has sent up very abundant and vigorous shoots all over the wood from the now more open and cleaned ground. These are evidently from stocks which were comparatively puny before.

The adjacent oak sprout-land has already sprung up so high that it makes on me about the same impression that it did before, though it  was  from six to ten feet high and was generally killed to the ground.

The fresh shoots from the roots are very abundant and three to five feet high, or half as high as before. So vivacious are the roots and so rapidly does Nature recover herself.

You see myriads of little shrub oaks and others in the woods which look as if they had just sprung from the seed, but on pulling one up you find it to spring from a long horizontal root which has survived perhaps several burnings or cuttings. Thus the stumps and roots of young oak, chestnut, hickory, maple, and many other trees retain their vitality a very long time and after many accidents, and produce thrifty trees at last.

In the midst of the wood, I noticed in some places, where the brush had been more completely burned and the ground laid bare, some fire-weed (Senecio), golden rods, and ferns.

Standing by a pigeon-place on the north edge of Damon's lot, I saw on the dead top of a white pine four or five rods off — which had been stripped for fifteen feet downward that it might die and afford with its branches a perch for the pigeons about the place, like the more artificial ones that were set up — two woodpeckers that were new to me.

They uttered a peculiar sharp kek kek on alighting (not so sharp as that of the hairy or downy woodpecker) and appeared to be about the size of the hairy woodpecker, or between that and the golden-winged. I had a good view of them with my glass as long as I desired.

With the back to me, they were clear black all above, as well as their feet and bills, and each had a yellow or orange (or possibly orange - scarlet?) front (the anterior part of the head at the base of the upper mandible). A long white line along the side of the head to the neck, with a black one below it.

The breast, as near as I could see, was gray specked with white, and the underside of the wing expanded was also gray, with small white spots. The throat white and vent also white or whitish.

Is this the arctic three-toed?

Probably many trees dying on this large burnt tract will attract many woodpeckers to it. 

I find a great many white oak acorns already sprouted, although they are but half fallen, and can easily believe that they sometimes sprout before they fall. It is a good year for them. 

It is remarkable how soon and unaccountably they decay. Many which I cut open , though though they look sound without, are discolored and decaying on one side or throughout within, though there is no worm in them. Perhaps they are very sensitive to moisture. 

Those which I see to-day are merely hazel and not nearly so black as what I saw yesterday. 

Trees that stand by themselves without the wood bear the most. 

The sugar maple seeds are now browned — the seed end as well as wing — and are ripe. 

The severe frosts about the first of the month ripened them. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1860

Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

October 7

Went to Plymouth to lecture and survey Watson's grounds. Returned the 15th.

The Decodon verticillatus (swamp loosestrife) very abundant, forming isles in the pond on Town Brook on Watson's farm, now turned (methinks it was) a somewhat orange (?) scarlet.

Measured a buckthorn on land of N. Russell & Co., bounding on Watson, close by the ruins of the cotton-factory, in five places from the ground to the first branching, or as high as my head. The diameters were 4 feet 8 inches, 4-6, 4-3, 4-2, 4-6. It was full of fruit now quite ripe, which Watson plants. The birds eat it.

Saw a small goldenrod in the woods with four very broad rays, a new kind to me

Saw also the English oak; leaf much like our white oak, but acorns large and long, with a long peduncle, and the bark of these young trees, twenty or twenty-five feet high, quite smooth.

Saw moon-seed, a climbing vine.

Also the leaf of the ginkgo tree, of pine-needles run together.

Spooner's garden a wilderness of fruit trees.

Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 7, 1854

Went to Plymouth to lecture.   On Sunday, October 8, 1854  Thoreau gave his lecture "Moonlight" to a small audience of friends, among them Bronson Alcott. James Spooner, Marston Watson and his wife Mary Russell Watson.  See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden 259-255.  See also Night and Moonlight

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance

October  6.

Monday. 12 m. — To Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. 

Carlisle Reach

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look. It is of a light sky-blue, alternating with smoother white streaks, where the surface reflects the light differently, like a milk-pan full of the milk of Valhalla partially skimmed, more gloriously and heavenly fair and pure than the sky itself.

It is something more celestial than the sky above it. I never saw any water look so celestial. I have often noticed it. I believe I have seen this reach from the hill in the middle of Lincoln.

We have names for the rivers of hell, but none for the rivers of heaven, unless the Milky Way be one.

It is such a smooth and shining blue, like a panoply of sky-blue plates.

Our dark and muddy river has such a tint in this case as I might expect Walden or White Pond to exhibit, if they could be seen under similar circumstances, but Walden seen from Fair Haven is, if I remember, of a deep blue color tinged with green.

Cerulean?

Such water as that river reach appears to me of quite incalculable value, and the man who would blot that out of his prospect for a sum of money does not otherwise than to sell heaven.

George Thatcher, having searched an hour in vain this morning to find a frog, caught a pickerel with a mullein leaf.

The white ash near our house, which the other day was purple or mulberry-color, is now much more red. 

7.30 P. M. – To Fair Haven Pond by boat, the moon four-fifths full, not a cloud in the sky; paddling all the way.

The water perfectly still, and the air almost, the former gleaming like oil in the moonlight, with the moon's disk reflected in it.

When we started, saw some fishermen kindling their fire for spearing by the riverside.

It was a lurid, reddish blaze, contrasting with the white light of the moon, with dense volumes of black smoke from the burning pitch pine roots rolling upward in the form of an inverted pyramid.The blaze reflected in the water, almost as distinct as the substance. It looked like tarring a ship on the shore of the Styx or Cocytus. For it is still and dark, notwithstanding the moon, and no sound but the crackling of the fire.

The fishermen can be seen only near at hand, though their fire is visible far away; and then they appear as dusky, fuliginous figures, half enveloped in smoke, seen only by their enlightened sides. Like devils they look, clad in old coats to defend themselves from the fogs, one standing up forward holding the spear ready to dart, while the smoke and flames are blown in his face, the other paddling the boat slowly and silently along close to the shore with almost imperceptible motion.

The river appears indefinitely wide; there is a mist rising from the water, which increases the indefiniteness. A high bank or moonlit hill rises at a distance over the meadow on the bank, with its sandy gullies and clamshells exposed where the Indians feasted.

The shore line, though close, is removed by the eye to the side of the hill. It is at high-water mark. It is continued till it meets the hill.

Now the fisherman's fire, left behind, acquires some thick rays in the distance and becomes a star. As surely as sunlight falling through an irregular chink makes a round figure on the opposite wall, so the blaze at a distance appears a star.

Such is the effect of the atmosphere.

The bright sheen of the moon is constantly travelling with us, and is seen at the same angle in front on the surface of the pads; and the reflection of its disk in the rippled water by our boat-side appears like bright gold pieces falling on the river's counter. This coin is incessantly poured forth as from some unseen horn of plenty at our side.

(I hear a lark singing this morn (October 7th ), and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks and blackbirds are heard again now occasionally, seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell.)

I do not know but the weirdness of the gleaming oily surface is enhanced by the thin fog.

A few water-bugs are seen glancing in our course.

I shout like a farmer to his oxen, — a short barking shout, — and instantly the woods on the eastern shore take it up, and the western hills a little up the stream; and so it appears to rebound from one side the river valley to the other, till at length I hear a farmer call to his team far up as Fair Haven Bay, whither we are bound.

We pass through reaches where there is no fog, perhaps where a little air is stirring.

Our clothes are almost wet through with the mist, as if we sat in water.

Some portions of the river are much warmer than others.

In one instance it was warmer in the midst of the fog than in a clear reach.

In the middle of the pond we tried the echo again. First the hill to the right took it up; then further up the stream on the left; and then after a long pause, when we had almost given it up, — and the longer expected, the more in one sense unexpected and surprising it was, — we heard a farmer shout to his team in a distant valley, far up on the opposite side of the stream, much louder than the previous echo; and even after this we heard one shout faintly in some neighboring town.
The third echo seemed more loud and distinct than the second.

But why, I asked, do the echoes always travel up the stream?

I turned about and shouted again, and then I found that they all appeared equally to travel down the stream, or perchance I heard only those that did so.

As we rowed to Fair Haven's eastern shore, a moonlit hill covered with shrub oaks, we could form no opinion of our progress toward it, — not seeing the water line where it met the hill, – until we saw the weeds and sandy shore and the tall bulrushes rising above the shallow water ( like ) the masts of large vessels in a haven. The moon was so high that the angle of excidence did not permit of our seeing her reflection in the pond.

As we paddled down the stream with our backs to the moon, we saw the reflection of every wood and hill on both sides distinctly. These answering reflections-shadow to substance-impress the voyager with a sense of harmony and symmetry, as when you fold a blotted paper and produce a regular figure, - a dualism which nature loves.

What you commonly see is but half.

Where the shore is very low the actual and reflected trees appear to stand foot to foot, and it is but a line that separates them, and the water and the sky almost flow into one another, and the shore seems to float.

As we paddle up or down, we see the cabins of muskrats faintly rising from amid the weeds, and the strong odor of musk is borne to us from particular parts of the shore.

Also the odor of a skunk is wafted from over the meadows or fields.

The fog appears in some places gathered into a little pyramid or squad by itself, on the surface of the water.

Home at ten.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6, 1851 

To Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. See September 18, 1851 ("Perambulated Bedford line.") See also April 3, 1858 ("we paddle along all day, down to the Bedford line.")

The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen from a distance in the road to-day, as formerly, has a singularly ethereal, celestial, or elysian look. See  April 1, 1852 ("Now I see the river - reach , far in the north . The more distant river is ever the most ethereal ,");April 10, 1852 ("This meadow is about two miles long at one view from Carlisle Bridge southward, appearing to wash the base of Pine hill, and it is about as much longer northward and from a third to a half a mile wide."):August 24, 1858 ("I look down a straight reach of water to the hill by Carlisle Bridge, —and this I can do at any season, — the longest reach we have. It is worth the while to come here for this prospect, — to see a part of earth so far away over the water")

tinyurl.com/HDT511006

Gnats are dancing in the air.

October 4. 

The maples are reddening, and birches yellowing. 

October 4, 2020

The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, so hoary, looks as if the frost still lay on it. Well it wears the frost.

Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus, and gnats are dancing in the air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 4, 1853

The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, See October 2, 1857 ("There is a more or less general reddening of the leaves at this season, down to the cinquefoil and mouse-ear, sorrel and strawberry under our feet.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear

Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus. See October 6, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path"); October 19, 1856 ("Of the asters which I have noticed since [the 8th], the A. undulatus is, perhaps, the only one of which you can find a respectable specimen. I see one so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it.") and note to October 20, 1852 ("Canada snapdragon, tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed")

Gnats are dancing in the air. See  October 19, 1856  ("Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)