September 24
Returning over the causeway from Flint's Pond the other evening (22d ), just at sunset, I observed that while the west was of a bright golden color under a bank of clouds, — the sun just setting, — and not a tinge of red was yet visible there, there was a distinct purple tinge in the nearer atmosphere, so that Annursnack Hill, seen through it, had an exceedingly rich empurpled look.
It is rare that we perceive this purple tint in the air, telling of the juice of the wild grape and poke-berries. The empurpled hills! Methinks I have only noticed this in cooler weather.
Last night was exceedingly dark. I could not see the sidewalk in the street, but only felt it with my feet. I was obliged to whistle to warn travellers of my nearness, and then I would suddenly find myself abreast of them without having seen anything or heard their footsteps.
It was cloudy and rainy weather combined with the absence of the moon. So dark a night that, if a farmer who had come in a-shopping had spent but an hour after sunset in some shop, he might find himself a prisoner in the village for the night.
Thick darkness.
8 A. M. — To Lee's Bridge via Conantum.
It is a cool and windy morning, and I have donned a thick coat for a walk.
The wind is from the north, so that the telegraph harp does not sound where I cross.
This windy autumnal weather is very exciting and bracing, clear and cold, after the rain of yesterday, it having cleared off in the night.
I see a small hawk, a pigeon (?) hawk, over the Depot Field, which can hardly fly against the wind.
At Hubbard's Grove the wind roars loudly in the woods.
Grapes are ripe and already shrivelled by frost; barberries also.
It is cattle show day at Lowell.
Yesterday's wind and rain has strewn the ground with leaves, especially under the apple trees. Rain coming after frost seems to loosen the hold of the leaves, making them rot off.
Saw a woodchuck disappearing in his hole.
The river washes up-stream before the wind, with white streaks of foam on its dark surface, diagonally to its course, showing the direction of the wind. Its surface, reflecting the sun, is dazzlingly bright.
The outlines of the hills are remarkably distinct and firm, and their surfaces bare and hard, not clothed with a thick air.
I notice one red tree, a red maple, against the green woodside in Conant's meadow. It is a far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer and more conspicuous.
The huckleberry bushes on Conantum are all turned red.
What can be handsomer for a picture than our river scenery now? Take this view from the first Conantum Cliff:
- First this smoothly shorn meadow on the west side of the stream, with all the swaths distinct, sprinkled with apple trees casting heavy shadows black as ink, such as can be seen only in this clear air, this strong light, one cow wandering restlessly about in it and lowing;
- then the blue river, scarcely darker than and not to be distinguished from the sky, its waves driven southward, or up-stream, by the wind, making it appear to flow that way, bordered by willows and button-bushes;
- then the narrow meadow beyond, with varied lights and shades from its waving grass, which for some reason has not been cut this year, though so dry, now at length each grass-blade bending south before the wintry blast, as if bending for aid in that direction;
- then the hill rising sixty feet to a terrace-like plain covered with shrub oaks, maples, etc., now variously tinted, clad all in a livery of gay colors, every bush a feather in its cap; and
- further in the rear the wood crowned Cliff some two hundred feet high, where gray rocks here and there project from amidst the bushes, with its orchard on the slope;
- and to the right of the Cliff the distant Lincoln hills in the horizon.
The landscape so handsomely colored, the air so clear and wholesome; and the surface of the earth is so pleasingly varied, that it seems rarely fitted for the abode of man.
In Cohush Swamp the sumach leaves have turned a very deep red, but have not lost their fragrance. I notice wild apples growing luxuriantly in the midst of the swamp, rising red over the colored, painted leaves of the sumach, and reminding me that they were ripened and colored by the same influences, some green, some yellow, some red, like the leaves.
Fell in with a man whose breath smelled of spirit which he had drunk. How could I but feel that it was his own spirit that I smelt?
Behind Miles's, Darius Miles's, that was, I asked an Irishman how many potatoes he could dig in a day, wishing to know how well they yielded. “Well, I don't keep any account,” he answered; “I scratch away, and let the day's work praise itself.” Aye, there's the difference between the Irish man and the Yankee; the Yankee keeps an account. The simple honesty of the Irish pleases me.
A sparrow hawk, hardly so big as a nighthawk, flew over high above my head, — a pretty little graceful fellow, too small and delicate to be rapacious.
Found a grove of young sugar maples (Acer saccharinum ) behind what was Miles's. How silently and yet startlingly the existence of these sugar maples was revealed to me, which I had not thought grew in my immediate neighborhood, — when first I perceived the entire edges of its leaves and their obtuse sinuses.
Such near hills as Nobscot and Nashoba have lost all their azure in this clear air and plainly belong to earth. Give me clearness nevertheless, though my heavens be moved further off to pay for it.
I perceive from the hill behind Lee's that much of the river meadows is not cut, though they have been very dry. The sun-sparkle on the river is dazzlingly bright in this atmosphere, as it has not been, perchance, for many a month.
It is so cold I am glad to sit behind the wall.
Still the great bidens blooms by the causeway side beyond the bridge.
At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or follicles of the Asclepias Syriaca now point upward. Did they before all point down? Have they turned up? They are already bursting.
I release some seeds with the long, fine silk attached. The fine threads fly apart at once, open with a spring, and then ray themselves out into a hemispherical form, each thread freeing itself from its neighbor and all reflecting prismatic or rainbow tints. The seeds, besides, are furnished with wings, which plainly keep them steady and prevent their whirling round. I let one go, and it rises slowly and uncertainly at first, now driven this way, then that, by currents which I cannot perceive, and I fear it will make shipwreck against the neighboring wood; but no, as it approaches it, it surely rises above it, and then, feeling the strong north wind, it is borne off rapidly in the opposite direction, ever rising higher and higher and tossing and heaved about with every fluctuation of the air, till, at a hundred feet above the earth and fifty rods off, steering south, I lose sight of it.
How many myriads go sailing away at this season, high over hill and meadow and river, on various tacks until the wind lulls, to plant their race in new localities, who can tell how many miles distant! And for this end these silken streamers have been perfecting all summer, snugly packed in this light chest, — a perfect adaptation to this end, a prophecy not only of the fall but of future springs.
Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?
On Mt. Misery some very rich yellow leaves — clear yellow — of the Populus grandidentata, which still love to wag, and tremble in my hands. Also canoe birches there.
The river and pond from the side of the sun look comparatively dark.
As I look over the country westward and northwestward, the prospect looks already bleak and wintry. The surface of the earth between the forests is no longer green, but russet and hoary. You see distinctly eight or ten miles the russet earth and even houses, and then its outline is distinctly traced against the further blue mountains, thirty or thirty-five miles distant. You see distinctly perhaps to the height of land between the Nashua and Concord, and then the convexity of the earth conceals the further hills, though high, and your vision leaps a broad valley at once to the mountains.
Get home at noon.
At sundown the wind has all gone down.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1851
I observed that while the west was of a bright golden color under a bank of clouds, — the sun just setting, — and not a tinge of red was yet visible there, there was a distinct purple tinge in the nearer atmosphere, so that Annursnack Hill, seen through it, had an exceedingly rich empurpled look. See October 19, 1858 ("The sun just ready to set, I notice that its light on my note-book is quite rosy or purple")
Last night was exceedingly dark. I could not see the sidewalk in the street, but only felt it with my feet. I was obliged to whistle to warn travellers of my nearness. See September 12, 1860 ("A dark and stormy night . . . Where the fence is not painted white I can see nothing, and go whistling for fear I run against some one. . . .You walk with your hands out to feel the fences and trees"); September 18, 1857 ("It was exceedingly dark. I met two persons within a mile, and they were obliged to call out from a rod distant lest we should run against each other. ")
I notice one red tree, a red maple, against the green woodside in Conant's meadow. See September 24, 1855 ("the maples are but just beginning to blush") See also September 25, 1857 ("The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence"); September 25, 1857 ("The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun."); September 25, 1857 ("A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar."); September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off."); September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water."
At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or follicles of the Asclepias Syriaca now point upward. Did they before all point down? Have they turned up? See August 24, 1851 ("The pods of the Asclepias pulchra stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver, an open salver truly! Those of the Asclepias Syriaca hang down.")
The fine threads fly apart at once, open with a spring, and then ray themselves out into a hemispherical form, each thread freeing itself from its neighbor. . . .a prophecy not only of the fall but of future springs. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by on a level with you, though commonly it has lost its freight, — notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood."); October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, 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. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds")
The further blue mountains, thirty or thirty-five miles distant. See June 3, 1850 ("The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon."); September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day"); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth,"); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); September 27, 1853 ("From our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them.");October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 22, 1860 ("Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountaintop through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.")
