October 24.
A northeast storm, though not much rainfalls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.”
This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago (??), faintly honking. A great many must go over to-day and also alight in this neighborhood. This weather warns them of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. Surely, then, while geese fly overhead we can live here as contentedly as they do at York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. We shall perchance be as well provisioned and have as good society as they. Let us be of good cheer, then, and expect the annual vessel which brings the spring to us without fail.
P. M. — To Woodis Park over Hill.
The celtis has just fallen. Its leaves were apparently a yellow green.
The sassafras trees are bare, — how long ? — and the white ash apparently just bared.
The locusts are bare except the tops, and in this respect those on the hills, at least, are as peculiar as birches. Some trees lose their lower leaves first, as birches and locusts; some the upper, as apples (though a few green leaves may remain on the very tips of the twigs) and generally maples, though the last fall fast.
Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least. [Apparently mocker-nut later.]
This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. The yard is strewn with the yellow leaves of the peach and the orange and scarlet ones of the cherry. You could not spread a cloth but it would soon be strewn with them.
Thorns and balm-of-Gilead and red mulberries bare.
The brilliant autumnal colors are red and yellow and the various tints, hues, and shades of these. Blue is reserved to be the color of the sky, but yellow and red are the colors of the earth flower. Every fruit, on ripening, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight.
Color stands for all ripeness and success. We have dreamed that the hero should carry his color aloft, as a symbol of the ripeness of his virtue. The noblest feature, the eye, is the fairest colored, the jewel of the body. The warrior’s flag is the flower which precedes his fruit. He unfurls his flag to the breeze with such confidence and brag as the flower its petals. Now we shall see what kind of fruit will succeed.
The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth as it were, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever one cheek toward the sun. Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its phenomena — color and mellowness and perfectness — to the fruits which we eat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat, hardly use at all, is annually ripened by nature. At our annual cattle-shows and horticultural exhibitions we make, as we think, a great show of fair fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble fate, fruits not worshipped for this chiefly; but round about and within our towns there is annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely grander scale, fruits which address our taste for beauty alone.
The scarlet oak, which was quite green the 12th, is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees (the pitch pine is with it) is now in its glory.
(I have not seen the beech, but suppose it past. The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple come nearest to it, but they have lost the greater part of their leaves.)
Look at one, completely changed from green to bright dark-scarlet, every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was not this worth waiting for? Little did you think ten days ago that that cold green tree could assume such color as this. Its leaves still firmly attached While those of other trees are falling around it. I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. The scarlet oaks, alone of oaks, have not given up the fight. Perchance their leaves, so finely cut, are longer preserved partly because they present less surface to the elements, and for a long time, if I remember rightly, some scarlet oak leaves will “hold out to burn.”
Now in huckleberry pastures you see only here and there a few bright scarlet or crimson (for they vary) leaves amid or above the bare reddish stems, burning as if with condensed brightness, — as if the few that remained burned with the condensed brightness of all that have fallen.
In sheltered woods you [see] some dicksonia still straw-color or pale-yellow. Some thoroughwort the same color. In the shade generally you find paler and more delicate tints, fading to straw-color and white.
The deep reds and scarlets and purples show exposure to the sun. I see an intensely scarlet high blueberry— but where one leaf has overlapped another it is yellow — with a regular outline.
That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1858
I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago. See note to
October 23, 1858 ("One tells me that he saw geese go over Wayland the 17th") and
October 27, 1857 ("I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm");
November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night. "); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm. ") See also
A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
Geese in Autumn
This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. Compare
October 24, 1855 ("The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind.");
October 24, 1853 ("Just after dark, high southerly winds arise, but very warm, blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house.")
October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. See
November 14, 1853 ("October is the month of painted leaves, of ripe leaves, when all the earth, not merely flowers, but fruits and leaves, are ripe. With respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky. This rich glow flashes round the world. This light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November.");
August 31, 1852 (
"The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.");
November 2, 1853 ("We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods"). Also
Autumnal Tints ("October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky ; November the later twilight.") and note to October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.")
That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted. See
October 4, 1858 ("Hornets are still at work in their nests.");
October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone");
October 22, 1858 ("Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets") ;
October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed."); See also
September 25, 1851 ("The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance."). See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau.
Wasps and Hornets
