A Book of the Seasons: October 13 (clear and warm, Fair Haven Pond, autumnal tints have already lost their brightness, chickadees, pine cones and acorns)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852 

October 13

Always the center –

the pond is now framed with the

autumn-tinted woods.

October 13, 1852

October 13, 2017

This has been the ninth of those wonderful days, and one of the warmest. I am obliged to sit with my window wide open all the evening as well as all day. It is the earlier Indian summer. October 13, 1857

It is a sufficiently clear and warm, rather Indian-summer day, and they are gathering the apples in the orchard. October 13, 1852 

 

Fair Haven lies more open and can be seen from more distant points than any of our ponds.October 13, 1852 

The water or lake, from however distant a point seen, is always the center of the landscape. October 13, 1852 

Birches, hickories, aspens, etc., in the distance, are like innumerable small flames on the hillsides about the pond. 

The pond is now most beautifully framed with the autumn-tinted woods and hills.October 13, 1852 

Fair Haven Pond, methinks, never looks so handsome as at this season. October 13, 1852 

The shrub oak plain is now a deep red. October 13, 1852

Drizzling, misty showers still, with a little misty sunshine at intervals. October 13, 1851. Rain, all day, more or less. October 13, 1858

The trees have lost many of their leaves in the last twenty-four hours. October 13, 1851

Elm leaves thickly strew the street now and rattle underfoot,—the dark brown pavement. The elms are at least half bare., October 13, 1858

The outside trees in the swamps lose their leaves first. October 13, 1857

The brilliancy of young oaks, especially scarlet oaks, in sprout-lands is dulled. October 13, 1857

Those most brilliant days, then, so far as the autumnal tints are concerned, are over; i. e., when we may be surprised at any turn by the sight of some incredibly bright and dazzling tree or grove of trees. October 13, 1857

Some white willows are very fresh and green yet. October 13, 1857

These red maples and young scarlet oaks, etc., have been the most conspicuous and important colors, or patches of color, in the landscape. October 13, 1857

Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red orange color. October 13, 1857

Looking from this hill, green begins to look as rare and interesting as any color, — you may say begins to be a color by itself, —and I distinguish green streaks and patches of grass on most hillsides. October 13, 1857

Many maples have lost all their leaves and are shrunk all at once to handsome clean gray wisps on the edge of the meadows. Crowded together at a distance they look like smoke. October 13, 1852

Maple fires are burnt out generally, and they have fairly begun to fall and look smoky in the swamps. When my eyes were resting on those smoke-like bare trees, it did not at first occur to me why the landscape was not as brilliant as a few days ago. October 13, 1857

The maples now stand like smoke along the meadows. October 13, 1855

The bass is bare. October 13, 1855

Some of the large ash trees, both a black and white, are quite bare of leaves already. With the red maples, then. October 13, 1857

This is a sudden and important change. The autumnal tints have already lost their brightness. It lasts but a day or two. October 13, 1852

The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river. The cones, being thus expanded, are more conspicuous on the trees. October 13, 1859

The pitch and white pines on the north of Sleepy Hollow. . . are at the height of their change, generally, though many needles fallen, carpeting the ground. October 13, 1857

A thick carpet of white pine needles lies now lightly, half an inch or more in thickness, above the dark-reddish ones of last year. October 13, 1855

The red of oaks, etc., is far more general now than three or four days ago, but it is also much duller, so that some maples that were a bright scarlet can now hardly be distinguished by their color from oaks, which have just turned red. October 13, 1857

I noticed the first large white oaks wholly changed to a salmon-color, but not brilliant like those sprout land fires. Are very large oaks never brilliant in their tints? [Yes.]October 13, 1857

The hickories on Poplar Hill have not lost any of their brilliancy, generally speaking. Some are quite green even. October 13, 1857

I look down into a mocker-nut, whose recesses and greater part are pure yellow, and from this you pass through a ruddy orange in the more exposed leaves to a rich crispy brown in the leaves of the extreme twigs about the clusters of round green nuts.October 13, 1857

The Great Fields from this hill are pale-brown, often hoary — there is not yellow enough for russet — pastures, with very large red or purple patches of black berry vines. October 13, 1857

You can only appreciate the effect of these by a strong and peculiar intention of the eye. We ordinarily do not see what is before us. October 13, 1857

Pinweeds are brown; how long? October 13, 1857

I see where dodder was killed, with the button-bush, perhaps a week. October 13, 1859

Many feverwort berries are fresh yet, though the leaves are quite withered. They are remarkable for their peculiar color. October 13, 1859

Many of the small hypericums, mutilum and Canadense, have survived the frosts as yet, after all. October 13, 1859

Corn-spurry and spotted polygonum and polygala. October 13, 1852

The thorn fruit on the hill is considerably past prime, though abundant and reddening the bushes still. October 13, 1859

The common alder up the Assabet is nerved like the hornbeam. October 13, 1859

I see no acorns on the trees. They appear to have all fallen before this. October 13, 1859

I rejoice when the white oaks bear an abundant crop. I speak of it to many whom I meet, but I find few to sympathize with me. They seem to care much more for potatoes. October 13, 1860

The Indians say that many acorns are a sign of a cold winter. It is a cold fall at any rate. 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?) or hemlock or larch, and a great abundance of white oak acorns in all parts of the town. October 13, 1860

This is a white oak year, not a pine year. I should think that there might be a bushel or two of acorns on and under some single trees. October 13, 1860

It is also an apple and a potato year. October 13, 1860

I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom for several rods around, which at first I refer to the decaying leaves. October 13, 1859

The swamp amelanchier is leafing again, as usual. What a pleasing phenomenon, perhaps an Indian- summer growth, an anticipation of the spring, like the notes of birds and frogs, etc., an evidence of warmth and genialness. Its buds are annually awakened by the October sun as if it were spring. October 13, 1859

The shad-bush is leafing again by the sunny swamp-side. . . Several times I have been cheered by this sight when surveying in former years. The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note at the sight of it. October 13, 1859

It is a foretaste of spring. In my latter years, let me have some shad-bush thoughts. October 13, 1859

The sun has got so low that . . . warmth is more desirable now than shade. October 13, 1851

The warmth is more required, and we welcome and appreciate it all. The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks. October 13, 1852

Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish. October 13, 1860

See a pretty large flock of tree sparrows, very lively and tame, drifting along and pursuing each other along a bushy fence and ditch like driving snow. Two pursuing each other would curve upward like a breaker in the air and drop into the hedge again. October 13, 1857

Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring. October 13, 1855

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. October 13, 1851

There is now a large swarm in the meeting-house chimney, in a flue not used. October 13, 1851

Many swarms have gone off that have not been heard from. October 13, 1851

The air is singularly fine-grained; the mountains are more distinct from the rest of the earth and slightly purple. October 13, 1852

Far amid the western hills there rises a pure white smoke. There is no disturbing sound. October 13, 1852

How peaceful great nature! October 13, 1852

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer. October 13, 1851

We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there. October 13, 1857 

October 13, 2018

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bees

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Fall 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. The Hickory

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Birches in Season

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, 

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October Moods

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The world can never be more beautiful than now

October 13, 2019

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.")
February 14, 1851 ("One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it; and something more I saw which cannot easily be described . . .")
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.")

April 14, 1852 ("Fair Haven Pond -- the pond, the meadow beyond the button-bush and willow curve, the island, and the meadow between the island and mainland with its own defining lines -- are all parted off like the parts of a mirror. A fish hawk is calmly sailing over all.")
May, 1850("In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can make me forget Fair Haven").

July 2 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”)
July 15, 1856 ("Both small hypericums, Canadense and mutilum, apparently some days at least by Stow's ditch.")
July 26, 1856 ("Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening")
August 12, 1856 ("11 a. m. — To Hill. The Hypericum mutilum is well out at this hour.")
August 15, 1859 ("Hypericum Canadense, Canadian St. John's-wort, distinguished by its red capsules.")
August 17, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense well out at 2 p. m.")
August 19, 1856 ("I see Hypericum Canadense and mutilum abundantly open at 3 p. m");
August 27, 1856 ("Hypericum Canadense and mutilum now pretty generally open at 4 P.M., thus late in the season")
September 15, 1856 ("The hypericums generally appear to be now about done. I see none.")
August 23, 1853 ("The feverwort berries are yellowing and yellowed.")
Septmeber 6, 1859 ("The feverwort berries are apparently nearly in their prime, of a clear "corn yellow " and as large as a small cranberry, in whorls at the axils of the leaves of the half- prostrate plants.")
September 22, 1854 (“[A]s the sun is preparing to dip below the horizon, the thin haze in the atmosphere north and south along the west horizon reflects a purple tinge and bathes the mountains with the same, like a bloom on fruits. ”)
September 29,1854 ("The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen"); \
September 30, 1852 ("custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree ")
October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit.");
October 2, 1856 ("Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, . . . turned crimson.")
October 2, 1857 ("The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you."); 

October 2, 1851("The shrub oaks on the terraced plain are now almost uniformly of a deep red.")
October 2, 1852 ("From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples.")October 2, 1852 ("How much more beautiful the lakes now, like Fair Haven, surrounded by the autumn-tinted woods and hills, as in an ornamented frame!")
October 2, 1852 ("A great many red maples are merely yellow; more, scarlet, in some cases deepening to crimson")
October 2, 1852 ("Some maples in sprout-lands are of a delicate, pure, clear, unspotted red, inclining to crimson, surpassing most flowers. I would fain pluck the whole tree and carry it home for a nosegay.")
October 2, 1851 ("Some of the white pines on Fair Haven Hill have just reached the acme of their fall; others have almost entirely shed their leaves, and they are scattered over the ground and the walls.")

October 3, 1860 ("Gathered to-day my apples at the Texas house. . . .between ten and eleven barrels.")
October 3, 1858 ("Looking all around Fair Haven Pond yesterday, where the maples were glowing amid the evergreens, my eyes invariably rested on a particular small maple of the purest and intensest scarlet")
October 5, 1857 (" A warm and bright October afternoon.[Begins now ten days of perfect Indian summer without rain; and the eleventh and twelfth days equally warm, though rainy.]")
October 6, 1857 ("A beautiful bright afternoon, still warmer than yesterday.")

October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen. “)

October 6 & 7, 1853 ("Windy. Elms bare.")

October 8, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. They cover the hillside like some wild grain.”)

October 9, 1851 ("The hills and plain on the opposite side of the river are covered with deep warm red leaves of shrub oaks.")

 October 9, 1857("birches are perhaps at the height of their change now")

October 9, 1857 ("The elms are now at the height of their change. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had come to the village itself")
October 10, 1851 ("Some maples which a week ago were a mass of yellow foliage are now a fine gray smoke, as it were, and their leaves cover the ground.")
October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”)
October 10, 1853 ("Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.”)
October 10, 1857 ("The sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year , so bright and serene the air and such a sheen from the earth, so brilliant the foliage, so pleasantly warm.")

October 10, 1857("Certainly these are .the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.")

October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.")

October 11, 1859 ("The note of the chickadee, heard now in cooler weather and above many fallen leaves, has a new significance.")
October 11, 1858 ("It is a cool seat under the witch-hazel in full bloom, which has lost its leaves! The leaves are greenish and brownish yellow")
October 11, 1857 ("This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Perhaps, these might be called Harvest Days.")

October 12, 1851 ("To-day no part of the heavens is so clear and bright as Fair Haven Pond and the river")

October 12, 1852 ("The elms in the village, losing their leaves, reveal the birds' nests.”)
October 12, 1855 (“The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it, —fleets of dry boats, blown with a rustling sound”)
October 12, 1852 ("A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods. The forest is laying down her carpet for the winter.")
October 12, 1857 ("The eighth fine day, warmer than the last two.")

The leafless maples

on the edge of the meadow

look like wisps of smoke.

October 13, 1852

October 14, 1853 ("Fine, clear Indian-summer weather.")

October 14, 1856 ("Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc.")

October 14, 1859 ("A fine Indian-summer day.")

October 14, 1859 ("The red, probably of scarlet oaks on the south of Fair Haven Hill, is very fair.")
October 14, 1859 ("The ground is strewn also with red oak acorns now, and, as far as I can discover, acorns of all kinds have fallen. ")

October 14, 1856 ("The maples are nearly bare. The leaves of red maples, still bright, strew the ground, often crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, just like some apples.")

October 14, 1856 ("Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. ")
October 15, 1856 (“The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”)
October 15, 1856 ("A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.")

October 16, 1857 (“Hemlock leaves are falling now faster than ever, and the trees are more parti-colored. The falling leaves look pale-yellow on the trees, but become reddish on the ground.”)
October 16, 1856 ("The ground was so stiff on the 15th, in the morning, that some could not dig potatoes. Bent is now making haste to gather his apples.")
October 17, 1857 (“A great many more ash trees, elms, etc., are bare now.”)

October 18, 1853 ("The red maples have been bare a good while. In the sun and this clear air, their bare ashy branches even sparkle like silver. ");
October 18, 1855 ("The maple swamps, bare of leaves, here and there about the meadow, look like smoke blown along the edge of the woods.");
October 18, 1858 ("I am struck by the magical change which has taken place in the red maple swamps . . . like the smoke that is seen where a blaze is extinguished")

October 19, 1856 ("The hypericums — the whole plant — have now generally been killed by the frost")
October 19, 1856 (“Both the white and black ash are quite bare, and some of the elms there.”);
October 20, 1857 ("Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees.")
October 20,1852 (“I see the mountains in sunshine, all the more attractive from the cold I feel here, with a tinge of purple on them.”)
October 21, 1857 ("Those who have put it off thus long make haste now to collect what apples were left out and dig their potatoes before the ground shall freeze hard.")
October 22, 1857 (" Look from the high hill, just before sundown, over the pond. The mountains are a mere cold slate-color. But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it?")

October 22, 1858 ("I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a single tree")
October 22, 1855 ("The swamp pyrus (Amelanchier) is leafing again. One opening leafet is an inch long, while the reddish yellow leaves still hold on at the end of the twig above. Its green swollen buds are generally conspicuous, curving round the stems. It is a new spring there. ")
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.");
October 26, 1854 ("Apple trees are generally bare, as well as bass, ash, elm, maple.”)
October 28, 1858 (The hemlock is in the midst of its fall, and the leaves strew the ground like grain. They are inconspicuous on the tree.")
October 31, 1853 ("The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones.”)
November 1. 1853 ("As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there.")

November 1, 1852 ("As I approached their edge, I saw the woods beneath, Fair Haven Pond, and the hills across the river, — which, owing to the mist, was as far as I could see, and seemed much further in consequence. I saw these between the converging boughs of two white pines a rod or two from me on the edge of the rock; and I thought that there was no frame to a landscape equal to this, — to see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture. ")
November 11, 1855 (“At the Hemlocks I see a narrow reddish line of hemlock leaves . .. mathematically level. This chronicles the hemlock fall, which I had not noticed, we have so few trees, and also the river’s rise”)
November 1, 1853 (I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood-lot last winter.);
November 4, 1854 (“The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already.”)
November 4, 1855 (“The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter,")

November 21, 1850 ("I see Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I do not see how it could be improved")

December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,")

December 8, 1850 ( "The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!")

December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, . . . is as it was designed and made to be.")
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 ")
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.")

October 13, 2019

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

October 12  <<<<<<<<<  October 13 >>>>>>>>  October 14

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

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

tinyurl.com/HDT-13OCTOBER