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
Beautiful they go
painted of a thousand hues –
oak maple and birch.
Merrily they go
scampering over the earth
selecting their graves.
October 20, 1853
Agreeable to me
the scent of the withered leaves–
the year, passing away.
October 20, 1855
Sunrise looking west –
conical mountain shadow
rapidly contracts.
The coldest day yet,
finger-cold as I come home,
hands find their pocket.
A straggling flock of
migrating crows contends with
the strong northwest wind.
Think not your journey
to the mountantop is lost
that you have no glass.
October 20, 1852
October 20, 2015
There is a very strong northwest wind, Novemberish and cool, raising waves on the river and admonishing to prepare for winter. October 20, 1857
Picking chestnuts on Pine Hill. A rather cold and wind, somewhat wintry afternoon, the heavens overcast. October 20, 1852
The clouds have lifted in the northwest. I see the mountains in sunshine, all the more attractive from the cold I feel here, with a tinge of purple on them. October 20, 1852
A cold but memorable and glorious outline. This is an advantage of mountains in the horizon: they show you fair weather from the midst of foul. October 20, 1852
Many a man, when I tell him that I have been on to a mountain, asks if I took a glass with me. No doubt, I could have . . . counted more meeting-houses; but this has nothing to do with the peculiar beauty and grandeur of the view which an elevated position affords. October 20, 1852
See the sun rise from the mountain-top. October 20, 1854
This is the time to look westward. October 20, 1854
All the villages, steeples, and houses on that side were revealed; but on the east all the landscape was a misty and gilded obscurity.October 20, 1854
A little white fog marked the site of many a lake and the course of the Nashua, and in the east horizon the great pond had its own fog mark in a long, low bank of cloud. October 20, 1854
Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State. October 20, 1854
It rapidly contracted, and its apex approached the mountain itself, and when about three miles distant the whole conical shadow was very distinct. October 20, 1854
At the public house, the mountain-house, they keep a glass to let, and think the journey to the mountaintop is lost, that you have got but half the view, if you have not taken a glass with you. October 20, 1852
I see a large and very straggling flock of crows fly southwest from over the hill behind Bull's and contending with the strong and cold northwest wind. This is the annual phenomenon. They are on their migrations. October 20, 1859
This is the coldest day as yet; wind from the northwest. It is finger-cold as I come home, and my hands find their way to my pocket. October 20, 1859
I learn the next day that snow fell to-day in northern New York and New Hampshire, and that accounts for it. October 20, 1859
We feel the cold of it here as soon as the telegraph can inform us. October 20, 1859
Land at Hemlocks, in the eddy there, where the white bits of sawdust keep boiling up and down and whirling round as in a pot. October 20, 1856
Amid the young pitch pines in the pasture behind I notice, as elsewhere of late, a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi, eaten by crickets; about three inches in diameter. October 20, 1856
I see the yellowish election-cake fungi. October 20, 1857
Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Beckii . . . this year. October 20, 1856
Canada snapdragon, tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. October 20, 1852
A very little Solidago nemoralis in one place from the axil. October 20, 1856
I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old. October 20, 1860
The very oldest evidences of a tree are a hollow three or four feet across, - the grave of an oak that was cut or died eighty or a hundred years ago there. October 20, 1860
The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them. They must make a principal part of their food now. October 20, 1857
Warren Brown, who owns the Easterbrooks place, the west side the road, is picking barberries. Allows that the soil thereabouts is excellent for fruit, but it is so rocky that he has not patience to plow it. That is the reason this tract is not cultivated . . . There was Melvin, too, a-barberrying and nutting. He had got two baskets, one in each hand, and his game-bag, which hung from his neck, all full of nuts and barberries, and his mouth full of tobacco. Trust him to find where the nuts and berries grow. He is hunting all the year and he marks the bushes and the trees which are fullest, and when the time comes, for once leaves his gun, though not his dog, at home, and takes his baskets to the spot . . . What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! Not a cultivated, hardly a cultivatable field in it, and yet it delights all natural persons, and feeds more still. Such great rocky and moist tracts, which daunt the farmer, are reckoned as unimproved land, and therefore worth but little; but think of the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit, resorted to by men and beasts; Clark, Brown, Melvin, and the robins, these, at least, were attracted thither this afternoon. There are barberry bushes or clumps there, behind which I could actually pick two bushels of berries with out being seen by you on the other side. And they are not a quarter picked at last, by all creatures to gether. I walk for two or three miles, and still the clumps of barberries, great sheaves with their wreaths of scarlet fruit, show themselves before me and on every side. October 20, 1857
The small red Solomon's-seal berries spot the ground here and there amid the dry leaves. The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers. October 20, 1852
Some small red maples still stand yellow within the woods . . . Red maple is either scarlet or yellow. October 20, 1858
The yellow birches are generally bare. October 20, 1857
The beach plum is nearly bare, and so is the woodbine on the brick house. October 20, 1859
The wild red cherry by A. Brooks's Hollow is completely fallen; how long? October 20, 1859
The sand cherry in my field path is almost entirely bare. October 20, 1859
Some chinquapin is half fallen. October 20, 1859
The pin-weeds are now bare, and their stem and fruit turned a dark brown. October 20, 1856
The thorns on the hill are all bare. October 20, 1856
The thorns on the hill are all bare. October 20, 1856
The button-bushes are nearly bare. October 20, 1856
How pleasant to walk over beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling fallen leaves . . . clean, crisp, and wholesome! October 20, 1853
How they are mixed up, all species, — oak and maple and chestnut and birch! October 20, 1853
How beautiful they go to their graves ! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould ! — painted of a thousand hues . October 20, 1853
They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil.
Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. October 20, 1853
So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. October 20, 1853
They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and . . . afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! October 20, 1853
We are all the richer for their decay. October 20, 1853
Agreeable to me is the scent of the withered and decaying leaves and pads, pontederias, on each side as I paddle up the river this still cloudy day, with the faint twittering or chirping of a sparrow still amid the bare button-bushes., October 20, 1855
It is the scent of the year, passing away. October 20, 1855
At Beck Stow's surveying, thinking to step upon a leafy shore from a rail, I get into water more than a foot deep. October 20, 1853
While wringing my wet stockings, I hear a rush of wings, look up, and see three dusky ducks swiftly circling over the small water. October 20, 1853
Scare up a yellow-legs, apparently the larger, on the shore of Walden. It goes off with a sharp phe phe, phe phe. October 20, 1859
Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch. Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter (began to have a fire, more or less, say ten days or a fortnight ago), we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs. October 20, 1856
I hear from my chamber the note of myrtle-birds [white-throat sparrow] mingled with sparrows, in the yard , especially in the morning, quite like a clear, sweet squeaking wheel barrow. October 20, 1856
A white-throated sparrow. October 20, 1858
I see on the dead top of a hickory, twittering very much like swallows, eighteen and more bluebirds, perhaps preparing to migrate. October 20, 1855
I had gone but little way on the old Carlisle road when I saw Brooks Clark, who is now about eighty and bent like a bow, hastening along the road, barefooted, as usual, with an axe in his hand; was in haste perhaps on account of the cold wind on his bare feet. It is he who took the Centinel so long. When he got up to me, I saw that besides the axe in one hand, he had his shoes in the other, filled with knurly apples and a dead robin. He stopped and talked with me a few moments; said that we had had a noble autumn and might now expect some cold weather. I asked if he had found the robin dead. No, he said, he found it with its wing broken and killed it. October 20, 1857
P. M. — To Hill, to look for ground squirrel nests.I dig into two or three squirrel-holes under a black oak, and in a rotten stump trace them a foot or more and lose them, or else they come to an end? Though I saw a squirrel enter the ground, I dug and lost it. They are apparently very busy now laying up their stores. I see a gray one making haste with waving tail across the field from the nut trees to the woods. October 20, 1856
I see where squirrels, apparently, have gnawed the apples left in the road. October 20, 1857
Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees. October 20, 1857
There are fewer turtles, now and for some time, out sunning. October 20, 1856
The river-banks have now assumed almost their November aspect. October 20, 1856
Another remarkably warm and pleasant day, if not too hot for walking; 74° at 2 P. M. October 20, 1858
The water is smooth, the sun warm, and the reflections particularly fine and distinct; but there are reflected now, for the most part, only gray twigs and a few sere and curled brown leaves, wool-grass, etc. October 20, 1856
I keep along the old Carlisle road. The leaves having mostly fallen, the country now seems deserted, and you feel further from home and more lonely. October 20, 1857
Several yellow butterflies in the meadow. October 20, 1853
I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual. October 20, 1858
"The facts of science, in comparison with poetry, are wont to be as vulgar as looking from the mountain with a telescope. It is a counting of meeting-houses. October 20, 1852
I enjoy more drinking water at a clear spring than out of a goblet at a gentleman’s table. I like best the bread which I have baked, the garment which I have made, the shelter which I have constructed, the fuel which I have gathered. October 20, 1855
There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you. October 20, 1858
October 20, 2015
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Solomon's Seal
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Yellow Birch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck
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 American Crow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Birds
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the White-throated Sparrow
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reflections
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October Moods
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October
October 20, 2018
March 5, 1854 ("And crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.")
June 3, 1858 ("It was still hazy, and we did not see the shadow of the mountain until it was comparatively short.")
September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock. . .to alight in a more distant place.”);
September 19, 1856 ("Observed an Aster undulatus behind oak at foot of hill on Assabet ")September 26, 1859 ("Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs, like pigeons, standing in the water by the bare, flat ammannia shore, their whole forms reflected in the water. They allow me to paddle past them, though on the alert.")
October 1, 1853 ("Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about.")
October 2, 1859 ("The A. undulatus looks fairer than ever, now that flowers are more scarce.")
October 4, 1853 ("Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus")
October 5, 1857 (“I see in most orchards the apples in heaps under the trees, and ladders slanted against their twiggy masses.”)
October 6, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path.")
Finger-cold to-day –
your hands find their way
to your pockets.
October 14, 1856
October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost . . . mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow”)
October 17, 1857 (" How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! ")
October 18, 1856 ("A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop")
October 19, 1856 ("The A. undulatus is, perhaps, the only [aster]of which you can find a respectable specimen. I see one so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it.")
October 19, 1857 ("Mr. Sanborn tells me that he looked off from Wachusett last night, and that he saw the shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon")October 22, 1853 (" Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed upon the earth. . . .This annual decay and death, this dying by inches, before the whole tree at last lies down and turns to soil. . . .They teach us how to die. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! . . .By what subtle chemistry they will mount up again, climbing by the sap in the trees. The ground is all parti-colored with them. For beautiful variety can any crop be compared with them?");
October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts."); October 23, 1855 ("Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders.");
October 25, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides.");
November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.”)
November 2, 1860 ("Ebby Hubbard's [wood]was never cut off but only cut out of.") November 3, 1852 ("At Andromeda Pond, started nine black (?) ducks just at sunset, as usual they circling far round to look at me")
November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet.")
November 26, 1860 ("I hear the faint note of a nuthatch . . .a phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember. ...”)
January 22, 1852 ("I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods.”)
October 20, 2021
October 20, 2021
October 20, 2018
October 20, 2013
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 20
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/HDT20Oct
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