The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying.

a fragrance

from the past

almost forgotten

~ Buson

October 2

Rain in the night and cloudy this forenoon. We had all our dog-days in September this year. It was too dry before, even for fungi. Only the last three weeks have we had any fungi to speak of. 

Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. 

I see a cricket feeding on an apple, into which he has eaten so deep that only his posteriors project, but he does not desist a moment though I shake the apple and finally drop it on the ground. 

P. M. — To lygodium. 

One of the large black birches on Tarbell's land is turned completely brownish-yellow and has lost half its leaves; the other is green still. 

I see in the cornfield above this birch, collected about the trunk of an oak, on the ground, fifty to a hundred ears of corn which have been stripped to the cob, evidently by the squirrels. Apparently a great part of the kernels remain on the ground, but in every case the germ has been eaten out. It is apparent that the squirrel prefers this part, for he has not carried off the rest. 

I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years. 

So many maple and pine and other leaves have now fallen that in the woods, at least, you walk over a carpet of fallen leaves. 

As I sat on an old pigeon-stand, not used this year, on the hill south of the swamp, at the foot of a tree, set up with perches nailed on it, a pigeon hawk, as I take it, came and perched on the tree. As if it had been wont to catch pigeons at such places. 

That large lechea, now so freshly green and some times scarlet, looks as if it would make a pretty edging like box, as has been suggested. 

The Aster undulatus and Solidago coesia and often puberula are particularly prominent now, looking late and bright, attracting bees, etc. 

I see the S. coesia so covered with the little fuzzy gnats as to be whitened by them. 

How bright the S. puberula in sprout-lands, — its yellow wand, — perhaps in the midst of a clump of little scarlet or dark-purple black oaks! 

The A. undulatus looks fairer than ever, now that flowers are more scarce. 

The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns. 

Acorns generally, as I notice, — swamp white, shrub, black, and white, — are turned brown; but few are still green. Yet few, except of shrub oaks, have fallen. I hear them fall, however, as I stand under the trees. This would be the time to notice them. 

How much pleasanter to go along the edge of the woods, through the field in the rear of the farmhouse, whence you see only its gray roof and its haystacks, than to keep the road by its door! This we think as we return behind Martial Miles's. 

I observed that many pignuts had fallen yesterday, though quite green. 

Some of the Umbelliferoe, now gone to seed, are very pretty to examine. The Cicuta maculata, for instance, the concave umbel is so well spaced, the different um-bellets (?) like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament. 

Hear a hylodes in the swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1859

Nowadays I see most of the election-cake fungi, with crickets and slugs eating them. See note to September 21, 1859 ("And now at last I see a few toadstools, — the election-cake (the yellowish, glazed over) and the taller, brighter-yellow above. Those shell-less slugs which eat apples eat these also."); October 15, 1857 ("I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus")

I see a cricket feeding on an apple. See October 2, 1857 ("Since the cooler weather many crickets are seen clustered on warm banks and by sunny wall-sides."); See also October 11, 1857 ("These are cricket days.")

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying, an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years. See October 2, 1857 ("In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent") See also  October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds");  and note to September 24, 1859 (" Stedman Buttrick's handsome maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns.") See also May 7, 1852 ("How full of reminiscence is any fragrance!"): July 31, 1856 ("Thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 18, 1856 (" The alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal . . . reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time . . . a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern 

 The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen. See May 1, 1859 ("The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.")

The Cicuta maculata like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament. See August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio. ")

October 2. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 2

The sour scent of ferns

reminds me of the season

and of the past years.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, 

The sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. 

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-591002

A New England landscape.

April 24. 

Sail to Ball's Hill. 

The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface. 

Scudding over the Great Meadows, I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime round about, above the gray stems. 

The willow osiers require to be seen endwise the rows, to get an intense color. 

The clouds are handsome this afternoon : on the north, some dark, windy clouds, with rain falling beneath

   





— but it is chiefly wind; 

southward, those summer clouds in numerous isles, light above and dark-barred beneath. 

Now the sun comes out and shines on the pine hill west of Ball's Hill, lighting up the light-green pitch pines and the sand and russet-brown lichen-clad hill. That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it. 

The little fuzzy gnats are about. I see a vertical circular cobweb, more than a foot in diameter, nearly filled with them, and this revealed the existence of the swarms that had filled the air on all sides. If it had been as many yards wide as it was inches, it would probably have been just as full. 

Saw on a small oak slanting over water in a swamp, in the midst of a mass of cat-briar, about ten feet from the ground, a very large nest, of that hypnum (?) moss, in the form of an inverted cone, one foot across above and about eight inches deep, with a hole in the side very thick and warm; probably a mouse-nest, for there were mouse droppings within.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 24, 1857

I see the now red crescents of the red maples in their prime . . . above the gray stems. See April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting. ") See also April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps. "); April 26, 1860 ("I have noticed their handsome crescents over distant swamps commonly for some ten days. At height, then, say the 21st. "); April 28, 1855 (" The abundant wholesome gray of the trunks and stems beneath surmounted by the red or scarlet crescents.”) note to May 1, 1856 ("Looking over the swamps a quarter of a mile distant, you see dimly defined crescents of bright brick red above and amid a maze of ash-colored branches.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it. See  February 9, 1858 (“A distant farmhouse on a hill, French’s or Buttrick's, perhaps.”); May 12, 1857 ("It reminded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming home from pasture.”). Compare August 26, 1856 ("What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.”); June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”)

The little fuzzy gnats are about. See April 21, 1855 ("All the button-bushes, etc., etc., in and about the water are now swarming with those minute fuzzy gnats about an eighth of an inch long. The insect youth are on the wing. The whole shore resounds with their hum wherever we approach it, and they cover our boat and persons. They are in countless myriads the whole length of the river. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

About ten feet from the ground . . . a mouse-nest. See November 15, 1857 ("A little Mus leucopus, panting with fear and with its large black eyes upon me . . . It will thus make its nest at least sixteen feet up a tree, improving some cleft or hollow, or probably bird's nest, for this purpose. These nests, I suppose, are made when the trees are losing their leaves") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The yellow farmhouse

nearby the light-green pitch pines

lit up by the sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A New England landscape.

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt570424

Winding up accounts

October 3.

P. M. — To Bateman's Pond; back by hog- pasture and old Carlisle road. 

Some faces that I see are so gross that they affect me like a part of the person improperly exposed, and it occurs to me that they might be covered, and, if necessary, some other, and perhaps better-looking, part of the person be exposed.

It is somewhat cooler and more autumnal. A great many leaves have fallen and the trees begin to look thin.


You incline to sit in a sunny and sheltered place.

This season, the fall, which we have now entered on, commenced, I may say, as long ago as when the first frost was seen and felt in low ground in August. From that time, even, the year has been gradually winding up its accounts.

Cold, methinks, has been the great agent which has checked the growth of plants, condensed their energies, and caused their fruits to ripen, in September especially. 

Perchance man never ripens within the tropics.

I see on a wall a myrtle-bird in its October dress, looking very much like a small sparrow. 

Also every where about the edge of the woods this afternoon, sylvias rather large and of a greenish yellow above and beneath, perhaps white vent, and much dark brown above, getting their food on the white birches. The same in very distant places. Perhaps it is the birch louse they eat. What bird is this?  It is quite unlike the sparrow-like myrtle-bird above described, unless some of them are of this color now. 

The Woodsia Ilvensis is partly withering or withered on the rocks, but not so much as the dicksonia. Yet it is evidently not evergreen. 

I see the ground strewn with Populus grandidentata leaves in one place on the old Carlisle road, where one third are fallen. These yellow leaves are all thickly brown-spotted and are very handsome, somewhat leopard-like. It would seem that they begin to decay in spots at intervals all over the leaf, producing a very pretty effect. 

Those P. grandidentata leaves are wildly rich. So handsomely formed and floridly scalloped, to begin with, — a fine chrome yellow now richly spotted with dark brown like a leopard's skin, — they cover the still green sward by the roadside and the gray road thick as a pavement, each one worthy to be admired as a gem or work of Oriental art. 

Among sound leaves I think of the fever-bush, Rhus radicans, beech, and shrub oak. 

It was mainly the frost of September 15 and 16 that put an end to the summer, that put the finishing stroke to the already withering grass, and left it to bleach in the fields, turning russet with blackberry vines intermixed, ripens nuts, — acorns, for example, — browning them. Frost and cold paint the acorn and the chestnut. The hickory has spots with a central ring, evidently produced by an insect. 

Think of the myriad variously tinted and spotted and worm-eaten leaves which now combine to produce the general impression of autumn! The ground is here strewn with thousands, any one of which, if you carry it home, it will refresh and delight you to behold. If we have not the leopard and jaguar and tiger in our woods, we have all their spots and rosettes and stripes in our autumn-tinted leaves. 

The ash trees are at their height now, if not earlier. Many of their leaves have fallen. 

The dicksonia ferns by the old Carlisle road-side are now almost all withered to dark cinnamon, and the large cinnamon ferns in Buttrick's wood are no longer noticed. 

Wild apples are perhaps at their height, or perhaps only the earlier ones.

Looking from the hog-pasture over the valley of Spencer Brook westward, we see the smoke rising from a huge chimney above a gray roof amid the woods, at a distance, where some family is preparing its evening meal. There are few more agreeable sights than this to the pedestrian traveller. 

No cloud is fairer to him than that little bluish one which issues from the chimney. It suggests all of domestic felicity beneath. There beneath, we suppose, that life is lived of which we have only dreamed. 

In our minds we clothe each unseen inhabitant with all the success, with all the serenity, which we can conceive of. If old, we imagine him serene; if young, hopeful. Nothing can exceed the perfect peace which reigns there. We have only to see a gray roof with its plume of smoke curling up amid the trees to have this faith. 

There we suspect no coarse haste or bustle, but serene labors which proceed at the same pace with the declining day. There is no hireling in the barn nor in the kitchen. 

Why does any distant prospect ever charm us? Because we instantly and inevitably imagine a life to be lived there such as is not lived elsewhere, or where we are. We presume that success is the rule. We forever carry a perfect sampler in our minds. 

Why are distant valleys, why lakes, why mountains in the horizon, ever fair to us? Because we realize for a moment that they may be the home of man, and that man's life may be in harmony with them. 

Shall I say that we thus forever delude ourselves? 

We do not suspect that that farmer goes to the depot with his milk. There the milk is not watered. We are constrained to imagine a life in harmony with the scenery and the hour. The sky and clouds, and the earth itself, with their beauty forever preach to us, saying, Such an abode we offer you, to such and such a life we encourage you. There is not haggard poverty and harassing debt. There is not intemperance, moroseness, meanness, or vulgarity.

Men go about sketching, painting landscapes, or writing verses which celebrate man's opportunities. 

To go into an actual farmer's family at evening, see the tired laborers come in from their day's work thinking of their wages, the sluttish help in the kitchen and sink-room, the indifferent stolidity and patient misery which only the spirits of the youngest children rise above, — that suggests one train of thoughts. 

To look down on that roof from a distance in an October evening, when its smoke is ascending peacefully to join the kindred clouds above, — that suggests a different train of thoughts. We think that we see these fair abodes and are elated beyond all speech, when we see only our own roofs, perchance. 

We are ever busy hiring house and lands and peopling them in our imaginations. There is no beauty in the sky, but in the eye that sees it.

Health, high spirits, serenity, these are the great landscape-painters. Turners, Claudes, Rembrandts are nothing to them. We never see any beauty but as the garment of some virtue. Men love to walk in those picture-galleries still, because they have not quite forgotten their early dreams. 

When I see only the roof of a house above the woods and do not know whose it is, I presume that one of the worthies of the world dwells beneath it, and for a season I am exhilarated at the thought. I would fain sketch it that others may share my pleasure. 

But commonly, if I see or know the occupant, I am affected as by the sight of the almshouse or hospital.  

Consider the infinite promise of a man, so that the sight of his roof at a distance suggests an idyll or pastoral, or of his grave an Elegy in a Country Church yard. How all poets have idealized the farmer's life! What graceful figures and unworldly characters they have assigned to them! Serene as the sky, emulating nature with their calm and peaceful lives. 

As I come by a farmer's to-day, the house of one who died some two years ago, I see the decrepit form of one whom he had engaged to "carry through," taking his property at a venture, feebly tying up a bundle of fagots with his knee on it, though time is fast loosening the bundle that he is. When I look down on that roof I am not reminded of the mortgage which the village bank has on that property, — that that family long since sold itself to the devil and wrote the deed with their blood. I am not reminded that the old man I see in the yard is one who has lived beyond his calculated time, whom the young one is merely "carrying through" in fulfillment of his contract; that the man at the pump is watering the milk. 

I am not reminded of the idiot that sits by the kitchen fire.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 3, 1859

You incline to sit in a sunny and sheltered place. See 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 21, 1857 ("Now again, as in the spring, we begin to look for sheltered and sunny places where we may sit."); 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.")

How all poets have idealized the farmer's life!

To look down on that roof from a distance in an October evening. No cloud is fairer than that little bluish one comes from his chimney. Never reminded of the idiot that sits by the kitchen fire. HDT ~ October 3, 1859