Thursday, October 14, 2021

A Book of the Seasons: October 14 (harvest time on Pine Hill overlooking Walden, reflections, autumnal tints, fallen leaves, fall flowers, myrtle birds)

 


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 14.


We sit on the rock
on Pine Hill overlooking
Walden's blue water.

Paddling slowly back
the blue of the sky deepens 
in the reflection. 

Leaves of red maples
crimson-spotted on yellow
just like some apples.


October 14, 2018


The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over.  October 14, 1857

Balloonists speak of hearing dogs bark at night and wagons rumbling over bridges. October 14, 1859

I take all these walks to every point of the compass, and it is always harvest-time with me. I am always gathering my crop from these woods and fields and waters. October 14, 1857

Fine, clear Indian-summer weather. October 14, 1853

Rained in the night, and finger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets. October 14, 1856

A sudden change in the weather after remarkably warm and pleasant weather. October 14, 1856

We have had some fog the last two or three nights, and this forenoon it was slow to disperse, dog-day-like, but this afternoon it is warmer even than yesterday. October 14, 1857

There is a very thick haze this afternoon and almost a furnace-like heat. I cannot see far toward the sun through it. October 14, 1857

Another, the tenth of these memorable days. October 14, 1857

These ten days are enough to make the reputation of any climate. A tradition of these days might be handed down to posterity. October 14, 1857

I see a black snake, and also a striped snake, out this warm day. October 14, 1859

I am glad to reach the shade of Hubbard’s Grove; the coolness is refreshing. October 14, 1857

A fine Indian-summer day. October 14, 1859

Down the railroad before sunrise. A freight-train in the Deep Cut. The sun rising over the woods. October 14, 1851

We sit on the rock on Pine Hill overlooking Walden. October 14, 1859

There is a thick haze almost entirely concealing the mountains. October 14, 1859

There is wind enough to raise waves on the pond and make it bluer. October 14, 1859

What strikes me in the scenery here now is the contrast of the unusually blue water with the brilliant-tinted woods around it. October 14, 1859


The earth appears like a great inverted shield painted yellow and red . . .  and a blue navel in the middle where the pond lies, and a distant circumference of whitish haze. October 14, 1859

The tints generally may be about at their height. October 14, 1859

Paddling slowly back, we enjoy at length very perfect reflections in the still water. October 14, 1858

The blue of the sky, and indeed all tints, are deepened in the reflection. October 14, 1858

I see, in Hubbard's Grove, a large black birch at the very height of its change. Its leaves a clear, rich yellow; many strew the ground. October 14, 1857

Some aspens are a very fair yellow now, and trembling as in summer. I think it is they I see a mile off on Bear Garden Hill, amid the oaks and pines. October 14, 1857

The red, probably of scarlet oaks on the south of Fair Haven Hill, is very fair. October 14, 1859

Next to the scarlet, methinks the white shrub oaks make, or have made, the most brilliant show at a distance on hillsides. The latter is not very bright, unless seen between you and the sun, but there its abundant inward color is apparent. October 14, 1857

Large oaks appear to be now generally turned or turning. October 14, 1857

The white, most conspicuous in sunny places, say a reddish salmon; began to change at lower limbs. Black oaks a brownish yellow. October 14, 1857

The nearer woods, where chestnuts grow, are a mass of warm, glowing yellow (though the larger chestnuts have lost the greater part of their leaves and generally you wade through rustling chestnut leaves in the woods), but on other sides the red and yellow are intermixed. October 14, 1859

The chestnuts generally have not yet fallen, though many have. I find under one tree a great many burs, apparently not cast down by squirrels — for I see no marks of their teeth — and not yet so opened that any of the nuts fall out. October 14, 1859

They do not all wait till frosts open the burs before they fall, then. 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, 1859

The shrub oak acorns are now all fallen, — only one or two left on, — and their cups, which are still left on, are apparently somewhat incurved at the edge as they have dried, so that probably they would not hold the acorn now. October 14, 1859

Arbor-vitae falling (seeds), how long? October 14, 1859

At Baker's wall two of the walnut trees are bare but full of green nuts (in their green cases), which make a very pretty sight as they wave in the wind. October 14, 1859

There is not a leaf on these trees, but other walnuts near by are yet full of leaves. You have the green nut contrasted with the clean gray trunks and limbs. October 14, 1859

The white maples are now apparently in their autumnal dress. The leaves are much curled and of a pale hoary or silvery yellow, with often a rosaceous cheek, though not so high-colored as two months ago. They are beginning to lose their leaves. Though they still hold on, they have lost much of their vitality. October 14, 1858

On the causeway I pass by maples here and there which are bare and smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing. October 14, 1857

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

They preserve these bright colors on the ground but a short time, a day or so, especially if it rains. October 14, 1857

My little white pines by Walden are now conspicuous in their rows, the grass, etc., having withered to tawny and the blackberry turned to scarlet. October 14, 1859

The pines are now two-colored, green and yellow, — the latter just below the ends of the boughs. October 14, 1852

Sat in the old pasture beyond the Corner Spring Woods to look at that pine wood now at the height of its change, pitch and white. . . .They are regularly parti-colored. October 14, 1857

They are a clear yellow, contrasting with the fresh and liquid green of the terminal plumes, or this year's leaves. These two quite distinct colors are thus regularly and equally distributed over the whole tree. You have the warmth of the yellow and the coolness of the green. October 14, 1857

October 14, 2018
Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. October 14, 1856

The dark evergreen leaves of the checkerberry also attract us now amid the shrub oaks, as on the southwest of Pine Hill. October 14, 1859

The tufts of Andropogon scoparius, which is common on the sandy shore under Ball’s Hill and yet more on the hill just behind Reuben Brown’s place, are now in their autumnal state, — recurved [?] culms adorned with white fuzzy spikes. The culms still are of a dull-red color, quite agreeable in the sun. October 14, 1858

I see a large flock of grackles, probably young birds, quite near me on William Wheeler's apple trees, pruning themselves and trying to sing. They never succeed; make a sort of musical spluttering.October 14, 1857

Most, I think, have brownish heads and necks, and some purple reflections from their black bodies. October 14, 185

Approaching White Pond by the path, I see on its perfectly smooth surface what I at first mistake for a large raft of dead and black logs and limbs, but it soon elevates itself in the form of a large flock of black ducks, which go off with a loud quacking. October 14, 1857

This, as other ponds now, when it is still, has a fine sparkle from skaters on it. October 14, 1857

The occasional dimples on this pure sheeny surface in which the sky is reflected make you suspect as soon some mote fallen from the sky as risen from beneath, to disturb it. October 14, 1857

I go along near the shore in the woods to the hill recently cleared on the east side. The clethra as an under-bush has an exceedingly pale yellow leaf. October 14, 1857

The nemopanthes on the hill side is like the amelanchier, yellowish with considerable ruddiness; the total effect is russet. October 14, 1857

There is a very little gossamer, mostly blowing off in large loops from the south side the bridge, the loose end having caught. I also see it here and there stretched across lanes from side to side, as high as my face. October 14, 1857

Looking now toward the north side of the pond, I perceive that the reflection . . .reflection exhibits such an aspect of the hill, apparently, as you would get if your eye were placed at that part of the surface of the pond where the reflection seems to be. October 14, 1857

The reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition, and this may be the source of its novelty and attractiveness, and of this nature, too, may be the charm of an echo. October 14, 1857

In this instance, too, then, Nature avoids repeating herself. October 14, 1857

I doubt if you can ever get Nature to repeat herself exactly. October 14, 1857

But few crickets are heard. October 14, 1852

Within a couple of rods a single hyla peeps interruptedly, bird like. October 14, 1857

Jays and chickadees are oftener heard in the fall than in summer. October 14, 1852

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. October 14, 1855

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 14, 1855

At the head of the path by the pond, I saw a red squirrel, only a rod off in a white pine, eating a toadstool. October 14, 1857

That coarse yellowish fungus is very common in the paths in woods of late, for a month, often picked by birds, often decayed, often mashed by the foot like a piece of pumpkin, defiling and yellowing the grass, as if a liquor (or dust) distilled from them. October 14, 1852

Huckleberries perfectly plump and fresh on the often bare bushes (always (else) red-leaved). The bare gray twigs begin to show, the leaves fast falling. October 14, 1856

The maples are nearly bare. October 14, 1856

The woods have lost so many leaves they begin to look bare, — maples, poplars, etc., chestnuts. October 14, 1852

The beech tree at Baker's fence is past prime and many leaves fallen. October 14, 1859

Some Rhus radicans was leafless on the 13th, and some tupelos bare maybe a week or more, and button-bushes nearly bare. October 14, 1859

Near by is a tupelo which is all a distinct yellow with a little green. October 14, 1857

In Laurel Glen, an aspen sprout which has grown seven to eight feet high, its lower and larger leaves, already fallen and blackened (a dark slate), about. October 14, 1856

One green and perfect leaf measures ten inches in length and nine broad, heart-shaped. Others, less perfect, are half an inch or more larger each way. October 14, 1856

Leaves are fast falling, and they are already past their brightness. October 14, 1856

Flowers are fast disappearing. Winter may be anticipated. October 14, 1852

I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc. October 14, 1856

Veronica serpyllifolia in bloom. October 14, 1857

 Medeola probably fallen several weeks . October 14, 1859

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. October 14, 1856

It is apparently the Eriophorum Virginicum, Virginian cotton-grass, now nodding or waving with its white woolly heads over the greenish andromeda and amid the red isolated blueberry bushes in Beck Stow's Swamp. A thousand white woolly heads, one to two inches in diameter, suggesting winter. October 14, 1852

On the top of Ball’s Hill, nearly half-way its length, the red pine-sap, quite fresh, apparently not long in bloom, the flower recurved. As last year, I suspect that this variety is later than the yellowish one, of which I have seen none for a long time. October 14, 1858

The last, in E. Hubbard’s wood, is all brown and withered. This is a clear and distinct deep-red from the ground upward, all but the edges and tips of the petals, and is very handsome amid the withered lower leaves, as it were the latest flower of the year. The roots have not only a sweet earthy, but decidedly checkerberry, scent. October 14, 1858

At length this fungus-like plant bursts red-ripe, stem and all, from the ground. Its deep redness reminds me of the deeper colors of the western sky after the sun has set, — a sort of afterglow in the flowery year.

I suspect that it is eminently an autumnal flower. October 14, 1858

Going to Laurel Glen in the hollow beyond Deep Cut Woods, I see now withered erechthites and epilobium standing thick on the bare hillside, where the hemlocks were cut, exposing the earth, though no fire has been there. They seem to require only that the earth shall be laid bare for them. October 14, 1856

The lower or older leaves of the andromeda begin to redden. This plant forms extensive solid beds with a definite surface, level or undulating, like a moss bed. October 14, 1852

This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing. October 14, 1860

Consider how many leaves there are to fall each year and how much they must add to the soil. We have had a remarkably fertile year. October 14, 1860

It is indeed a golden autumn. October 14, 1857

Was there ever such an autumn? October 14, 1857

The willows have the bleached look of November. October 14, 1860

Let us see now if we have a cold winter. October 14, 1860


A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Myrtle-bird
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets
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 Aspens
 
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, 

*****

February 29, 1852 (" From Pine Hill, looking westward, I see the snowcrust shine in the sun as far as the eye can reach")
April 14, 1855 (“The waters, too, are smooth and full of reflections.”)
April 27, 1859 ("Through the cemetery, and over Pine Hill, where I heard a strange warbler, methought, a dark-colored, perhaps reddish-headed bird")
May 15, 1856 (“Checker-berries very abundant on south side of Pine Hill, by pitch pine wood. Now is probably best time to gather them.”);
June 12, 1853 ("Going up Pine Hill, disturbed a partridge and her brood. She ran indeshabille directly to me, within four feet, while her young, not larger than a chicken just hatched, dispersed. ")
July 8, 1857 ("Edith Emerson . . .[s]ays she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.”)
July 29, 1858 ("To Pine Hill, looking for the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum berries. I find plenty of bushes, but these bear very sparingly. They appear to bear but one or two years before they are overgrown.");
August 8, 1854 ("I see one large white maple crisped and tinged with a sort of rosaceous tinge, just above the Golden Horn.”)
August 14, 1856 (“Hypopitys, just beyond the last large (two-stemmed) chestnut at Saw Mill Brook, about done. Apparently a fungus like plant. It erects itself in seed.”)
August 15, 1858 (“The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising.”)
August 22, 1856 (“I notice three or four clumps of white maples, at the swamp up the Assabet, which have turned as red (dull red) as ever they do, fairly put on their autumnal hue.”)
August 23, 1858 (“See an abundance of pine-sap on the right of Pine-sap Path.”)
August 27, 1854 ("I am surprised to see the top of Pine Hill wearing its October aspect, — yellow with changed maples and here and there faintly blushing with changed red maples. . . .. As I go up Pine Hill, gather the shrivelled Vaccinium vacillans berries, many as hard as if dried on a pan. They are very sweet and good.")
August 31, 1852 ("That part of the sky just above the horizon seen reflected, apparently, some rods off from the boat is as light a blue as the actual, but it goes on deepening as your eye draws nearer to the boat, until, when you look directly down at the reflection of the zenith, it is lost in the blackness of the water.”)
September 8, 1858 ("I perceive the dark-crimson leaves, quite crisp, of the white maple on the meadows, recently fallen.") 
September 9, 1857 (“C. brings me a small red hypopitys. It has a faint sweet, earthy, perhaps checkerberry, scent”)
September 10, 1857 (“the white maples by the bank of the river a mile off now give a rosaceous tinge to the edge of the meadow.”)
September 12, 1851 ("Found a violet, apparently Viola cucullata, or hood-leaved violet, in bloom in Baker's Meadow beyond Pine Hill.")
September 12, 1854 ("White oak acorns have many of them fallen. . . .. Some black scrub oak acorns have fallen, and a few black oak acorns also have fallen. The red oak began to fall first.")
September 20, 1852 (“The reflected sky is a deeper blue.”)
September 23, 1857 (“The red variety is very common and quite fresh generally there.”);
September 23, 1860 (“Red pine-sap by north side of Yew Path some ten rods east of yew, not long done. The root of the freshest has a decided checkerberry scent, and for a long time — a week after — in my chamber, the bruised plant has a very pleasant earthy sweetness.”)
September 30, 1854 ("Acorns are generally now turned brown and fallen or falling; the ground is strewn with them and in paths they are crushed by feet and wheels.")
October 1, 1859 ("Looking down from Pine Hill, I see a fish hawk over Walden.")
October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit. . . .Now is the time for shrub oak acorns if not for others.")
October 3, 1859 ("I see on a wall a myrtle-bird in its October dress, looking very much like a small sparrow.")
October 4, 1858 (“The white maples that changed first are about bare. ”)
October 6, 1857 (“I see a great quantity of hypopitys, now all sere, along the path in the woods beyond. Call it Pine-Sap Path. It seems to have been a favorable season for it”)
October 8, 1857 (“Those white maples that were so early to change in the water have more than half lost their leaves.”)
October 10, 1859 (" myrtle-birds (which fly up against side of house and alight on window-sills)")
October 11, 1856  ("In the woods I hear the note of the jay, a metallic, clanging sound, some times a mew. Refer any strange note to him.")
 October 11, 1860 ("There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall, also a fair crop of red oak acorns; but not of scarlet and black, very few of them. The acorns are now in the very midst of their fall."); 
October 12, 1858 ("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.")
October 12, 1852 ("A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods.")
October 13, 1855 ("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, 1859 ("I see no acorns on the trees. They appear to have all fallen before this.")
October 13, 1860 ("This is a white oak year, . . . I should think that there might be a bushel or two of acorns on and under some single trees.")

A tradition of 
these days might be handed down 
to posterity. 
October 14, 1857

October 15, 1857 ("Some white maples by the river are nearly bare.")
October 15 1858 ("White pines are in the midst of their fall")
October 15, 1859 ("I think I see myrtle-birds on white birches")
October 16, 1855 ("How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground! quite like a carpet.")
October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out.")
October 17, 1858 ("I see one or two large white maples quite bare”)
October 18, 1852 ("Chickadees and jays are heard from the shore as in winter.")
October 18, 1857 (" Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones")
October 20, 1852 (“Picking chestnuts on Pine Hill. . . . I see the mountains in sunshine, all the more attractive from the cold I feel here, with a tinge of purple on them”); October 25, 1858 ("Returning in an old wood-path from top of Pine Hill to Goose Pond, I see many goldenrods turned purple")
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.")
October 22, 1852 ("Looking over the forest on Pine Hill, I can hardly tell which trees are lit up by the sunshine and which are the yellow chestnut-tops.")
October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.")
October 23, 1852 ("A striped snake out.")
October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression.") 
October 28, 1858 (“The majority of the white maples are bare, but others are still thickly leaved the leaves being a greenish yellow. It appears, then, that they hold their leaves longer than our other maples, or most trees. The majority of them do not acquire a bright tint at all, and, though interesting for their early summer blush, their autumnal colors are not remarkable. ”)
 October 28, 1853 ("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,")
November 1, 1860 (" A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves.")
November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”)
November 4, 1857 ("I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting, this cool evening. Sitting with my back to a thick oak sprout whose leaves still glow with life, Walden lies an oblong square endwise to, beneath me. Its surface is slightly rippled, and dusky prolonged reflections of trees extend wholly across its length, or half a mile, — I sit high.")
November 5, 1857 ("I shiver about awhile on Pine Hill, waiting for the sun to set.")
November 5, 1858 (“A few white maples are not yet bare, but thinly clothed with dull-yellow leaves which still have life in them. ")
November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").
December 8, 1853 (“I saw from the peak the entire reflection of large white pines very distinctly against a clear white sky, though the actual tree was completely lost in night against the dark distant hillside.”)
November 30, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, Wachusett is seen over Walden. The country seems to slope up from the west end of Walden to the mountain")
 December 9, 1856 ("I perceive that more or other things are seen in the reflection than in the substance.")
January 9, 1853 ("I see to-day the reflected sunset sky in the river, but the colors in the reflection are different from those in the sky.”)

October 14, 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.

October 13  <<<<<<<<< October 14 >>>>>>>>  October 15

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 14
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

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