October 8
Wednesday.
A slight wind now fills the air with elm leaves.
The nights have been cool of late, so that a fire has been comfortable, but the last was quite warm.
October 8, 2020
This day is very warm, yet not bright like the last, but hazy.
Picked up an Indian gouge on Dennis's Hill.
The foliage has lost its very bright tints now; it is more dull, looks dry, or as if burnt, even.
The very ground or grass is crisped with drought, and yields a crispy sound to my feet.
The woods are brownish, reddish, yellowish merely, excepting of course the evergreens.
It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my neck-handkerchief and laborers complain of the heat.
By the side of J. P. Brown's grain-field I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the wood-side, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible. To my taste they are quite as good as chestnuts. No wonder the first men lived on acorns.
The woods are brownish, reddish, yellowish merely, excepting of course the evergreens.
It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my neck-handkerchief and laborers complain of the heat.
By the side of J. P. Brown's grain-field I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the wood-side, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible. To my taste they are quite as good as chestnuts. No wonder the first men lived on acorns.
Such as these are no mean food, such as they are represented to be. Their sweetness is like the sweetness of bread, and to have discovered this palatableness in this neglected nut, the whole world is to me the sweeter for it. I am related again to the first men.
What can be handsomer, wear better to the eye, than the color of the acorn, like the leaves on which they fall polished, or varnished? To find that acorns are edible, -- it is a greater addition to one's stock of life than would be imagined. I should be at least equally pleased if I were to find that the grass tasted sweet and nutritious. It increases the number of my friends; it diminishes the number of my foes.
How easily at this season I could feed myself in the woods! There is mast for me too, as well as for the pigeon and the squirrel. This Dodonean fruit.
The goldfinches are in the air.
What can be handsomer, wear better to the eye, than the color of the acorn, like the leaves on which they fall polished, or varnished? To find that acorns are edible, -- it is a greater addition to one's stock of life than would be imagined. I should be at least equally pleased if I were to find that the grass tasted sweet and nutritious. It increases the number of my friends; it diminishes the number of my foes.
How easily at this season I could feed myself in the woods! There is mast for me too, as well as for the pigeon and the squirrel. This Dodonean fruit.
The goldfinches are in the air.
I hear a blackbird also, and see a downy woodpecker, and see and hear a hairy one.
The seeds of the pasture thistle are not so buoyed up by their down as the milkweed.
In the forenoon commonly I see nature only through a window; in the afternoon my study or apartment in which I sit is a vale.
The farmers are ditching,-redeeming more meadow, – getting corn, collecting their apples, threshing, etc.
I cannot but believe that acorns were intended to be the food of man.
They are agreeable to the palate, as the mother's milk to the babe. The sweet acorn tree is famous and well known to the boys. There can be no question respecting the wholesomeness of this diet.
This warm day is a godsend to the wasps. I see them buzzing about the broken windows of deserted buildings, as Jenny Dugan's, -- the yellow-knotted.
I smell the dry leaves like hay from the woods.
Some elms are already bare.
The basswood here is quite sere.
The pines are still shedding their leaves.
This brook by Jenny's is always a pleasant sight and sound to me. In the spring I saw the sucker here. It is remarkable through what narrow and shallow brooks a sucker will be seen to dart, and a trout.
I perceive that some white oaks are quite red. The black oaks are yellowish. I know not surely whether the brighter red and more divided leaf is that of the red or the scarlet oak.
The jointed polygonum in the Marlborough road is an interesting flower, it is so late, so bright a red, — though inobvious from its minuteness, — without leaves, above the sand like sorrel, mixed with other minute flowers and the empty chalices of the trichostema.
This brook by Jenny's is always a pleasant sight and sound to me. In the spring I saw the sucker here. It is remarkable through what narrow and shallow brooks a sucker will be seen to dart, and a trout.
I perceive that some white oaks are quite red. The black oaks are yellowish. I know not surely whether the brighter red and more divided leaf is that of the red or the scarlet oak.
The jointed polygonum in the Marlborough road is an interesting flower, it is so late, so bright a red, — though inobvious from its minuteness, — without leaves, above the sand like sorrel, mixed with other minute flowers and the empty chalices of the trichostema.
I saw one blue curl still adhering.
The puffballs are split open and rayed out on the sand like five or ten (!) fingers.
The milkweed seeds must be carried far, for it is only when a strong wind is blowing that they are loosened from their pods.
An arrowhead at the desert.
Spergula arvensis -- corn-spurry (some call it tares) -- at the acorn tree.
Filled my pockets with acorns.
Found another gouge on Dennis's Hill. To have found the Indian gouges and tasted sweet acorns, is it not enough for one afternoon?
The sun set red in haze, visible fifteen minutes before setting, and the moon rose in like manner at the same time.
This evening, I am obliged to sit with my door and window open, in a thin coat, which I have not done for three weeks at least. A warm night like this at this season produces its effect on the village.
The boys are heard at play in the street now, at 9 o'clock, in greater force and with more noise than usual. My neighbor has got out his flute.
There is more fog than usual.
The moon is full.
The tops of the woods in the horizon seen above the fog look exactly like long, low black clouds, the fog being the color of the sky.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1851
This evening, I am obliged to sit with my door and window open, in a thin coat, which I have not done for three weeks at least. A warm night like this at this season produces its effect on the village.
The boys are heard at play in the street now, at 9 o'clock, in greater force and with more noise than usual. My neighbor has got out his flute.
There is more fog than usual.
The moon is full.
The tops of the woods in the horizon seen above the fog look exactly like long, low black clouds, the fog being the color of the sky.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1851
I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the wood-side, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible. See November 24, 1860 ("The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple."); September 11, 1859 ("No fruit is handsomer than the acorn . . .Very pretty, especially, are the white oak acorns, three raying from one centre.") See also 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 13, 1859 ("I see no acorns on the trees. They appear to have all fallen before this.")
The milkweed seeds must be carried far, for it is only when a strong wind is blowing that they are loosened from their pods. See October 23, 1852 ("The seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. ") See alsoA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed.
The moon is full. See October 10, 1851 ("The elms in the village have lost many of their leaves, and their shadows by moonlight are not so heavy as last month"); See alsoA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October Nights and Moonlight
October 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 8
The white oak acorns
are unexpectedly sweet
and platable.
Milkweed seeds loosen
only when a strong wind blows –
so they carry far.
The sun setting red
in haze at the same time as
the full moon rises.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed seeds carry far
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 © 2009-2025
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