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.")