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 21, 2013
It began to rain about 10 o’clock last evening after a cloudy day, and it still rains, gently but steadily, this morning. October 21, 1855
The wind must be east, for I hear the church bell very plainly; yet I sit with an open window, it is so warm. October 21, 1855
A damp cloudy day only, after all, and scarcely any rain; a good day for all hunters to be out, especially on the water. October 21, 1855
A very warm Indian-summer day, too warm for a thick coat. October 21, 1856
Cooler to-day, yet pleasant. October 21, 1858
On the hilltop, the sun having just risen, I see on my note-book that same rosy or purple light, when contrasted with the shade of another leaf, which I saw on the evening of the 19th, though perhaps I can detect a little purple in the eastern horizon. October 21, 1858
Cool and windy. October 21, 1857
First ice that I’ve seen or heard of, a tenth of an inch thick in yard, and the ground is slightly frozen. October 21, 1857
It is very cold and blustering to-day. It is the breath of winter, which is encamped not far off to the north. October 21, 1859
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 21, 1857
The birds that fly at the approach of winter are come from the north. October 21, 1852
I see many myrtle-birds now about the house this forenoon, on the advent of cooler weather. .October 21, 1857
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. October 21, 1857
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. Chubby birds.October 21, 1857
The Populus grandidentata is quite yellow and leafy yet,— the most showy tree thereabouts. October 21, 1858
The large sugar maples on the Common are in the midst of their fall to-day. October 21, 1858
The currant row is bare, but the gooseberries at the end are full of scarlet leaves still. October 21, 1855
The yellowish leaves of the black oak incline soon to a decayed and brown look. October 21, 1855
The red oak is more red. October 21, 1855
But the scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! They look somewhat like double or treble crosses. October 21, 1855
But the scarlet is very bright and conspicuous. How finely its leaves are out against the sky with sharp points, especially near the top of the tree! They look somewhat like double or treble crosses. October 21, 1855
The red maples have lost their leaves before the rock maple which is now losing its leaves at top first. October 21, 1852
This gradualness in the changing and falling of the leaves produces agreeable effects and contrasts. October 21, 1855
Most leaves now on the water. They fell yesterday, — white and red maple, swamp white oak, white birch, black and red oak, hemlock (which has begun to fall), hop-hornbeam, etc., etc. October 21, 1858
They cover the water thickly, concealing all along the south side for half a rod to a rod in width, and at the rocks, where they are met and stopped by the easterly breeze, form a broad and dense crescent quite across the river. October 21, 1858
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. October 21, 1852
All the country over the frosts have come and seared the tenderer herbs along all brook sides. October 21, 1852
How unobserved this change until it has taken place. October 21, 1852
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. October 21, 1852
This is a remarkable feature in the landscape now the abundance of dead weeds. The frosts have done it. October 21, 1852
Apparently some flowers yield to the frosts, others linger here and there till the snow buries them. October 21, 1852
Polygonum articulaium lingers still.
The deciduous trees are green but about four months in the year from June 1st to October 1st perhaps. October 21, 1852
The clump of mountain laurel in Mason's pasture is of a triangular form, about six rods long by a base of two and a third rods, — or seven or eight square rods, — beside some separate clumps. October 21, 1859
Winter comes on gradually. October 21, 1852
As I am paddling home swiftly before the northwest wind, absorbed in my wooding, I see, this cool and grayish evening, that peculiar yellow light in the east, from the sun at little before its setting. October 21, 1857
It has just come out beneath a great cold slate-colored cloud that occupies most of the western sky, as smaller ones the eastern, and now its rays, slanting over the hill in whose shadow I float, fall on the eastern trees and hills with a thin, yellow light like a clear yellow wine, but somehow it reminds me that now the hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors. October 21, 1857
Now again, as in the spring, we begin to look for sheltered and sunny places where we may sit. October 21, 1857
Before I get home the sun has set and a cold white light in the west succeeded. October 21, 1857
October 21, 2017
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Myrtle-bird
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bells and Whistles
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October
October 21, 2017
March 23, 1860 ("The descent to extreme cold occupies seven months and is therefore more gradual (though a part of it is more rapid) than the ascent to extreme heat, which takes only five months. ")
April 26, 1857 (In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates.”)
October 5, 1851 ("The earth has gradually turned more northward; the birds have fled south after the sun, and this impresses me as a deserted country.")
October 6, 1858 ("Only one of the large maples on the Common is yet on fire.")
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 12, 1851 (" I hear Lincoln bell tolling for church. . . . Heard at a distance, the sound of a bell acquires a certain vibratory hum, . . . its vibrating echoes, that portion of the sound which the elements take up and modulate,–– a sound which is very much modified, sifted, and refined before it reaches my ear. . . . is in some measure the voice of the wood")
October 12, 1855 ("The leaves fallen last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it“)
October 14, 1855 (“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, 1856("Large fleets of maple and other leaves are floating on its surface as I go up the Assabet. . .")
October 15, 1859 ("I see some black oak acorns on the trees still and in some places at least half the shrub oak acorns. The last are handsomer now that they have turned so much darker.")
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 17, 1856 ("Countless leafy skiffs are floating on pools and lakes and rivers and in the swamps and meadows, often concealing the water quite from foot and eye.")
October 17, 1857("The swamp floor is covered with red maple leaves, many yellow with bright-scarlet spots or streaks. Small brooks are almost concealed by them”)
October 17, 1858 (" Up Assabet. There are many crisped but colored leaves resting on the smooth surface of the Assabet,”)
October 15, 1859 ("Standing on this hilltop this cold and blustering day, when dark and slate-colored clouds are flitting over the sky, the beauty of the scenery is enhanced by the contrast in the short intervals of sunshine.")
October 16, 1857 (“The large poplar (P. grandidentata) is now at the height of its change, – clear yellow, but many leaves have fallen.”)
October 18, 1853 ("Poplars (grandidentata) clear, rich yellow.")
October 18, 1856 ("The sugar maples are now in their glory, all aglow with yellow, red, and green.”)
October 18, 1858 ("The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty.")
October 19, 1853 ("The leaves have fallen so plentifully that they quite conceal the water along the shore, and rustle pleasantly when the wave which the boat creates strikes them.”)
October 19, 1856 (“See quite a flock of myrtle-birds, — which I might carelessly have mistaken for slate-colored snowbirds.")
October 20, 1858 ("There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you.")
Cold and blustering.
It is the breath of winter
encamped not far north.
October 21, 1859
October 24, 1855 (“The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, and, half having fallen, look like the reflection of the trees ")
October 25, 1858 (“The leaves of the Populus grandidentata,though half fallen and turned a pure and handsome yellow, are still wagging as fast as ever. .. . I do not think of any tree whose leaves are so fresh and fair when they fall.”)
October 26, 1852 ("At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides . . .where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat.")
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.")
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,")
October 28, 1858 (“Its leaves are large and conspicuous on the ground, and from their freshness make a great show there”)
November 22, 1853 ("I was just thinking it would be fine to get a specimen leaf from each changing tree and shrub and plant in autumn, in September and October, when it had got its brightest characteristic color . . . I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata...”)
October 21, 2017
October 21, 2018
October 21, 2022
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.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 21
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/HDT21Oct
No comments:
Post a Comment