There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons

October 20. 

The black birch in this grove.

The black birch in this 

grove is in the midst of its fall,

perfectly yellow.

But these tinted leaves 

wilt and fade on your way home,

even in your hat.

Their fleeting colors

must be seen on the tree,

or under it.

October 20, 1858

Black birch
October 20, 2018

Indian summer this and the 19th. I hear of apple trees in bloom again in Waltham or Cambridge. 

P. M. — To White Pond. 

Another remarkably warm and pleasant day, if not too hot for walking; 74° at 2 P. M. Thought I would like to see the glassy gleaming surface of White Pond. 

I think that this is the acme of the fall generally, — not quite of sugar maples perhaps, — and it is this remarkable heat which this time, more than anything, methinks, has caused the leaves to fall. 

It has suddenly perfectly ripened and wilted them, and now, with a puff of wind, they come showering down on land and water, making a sound like rain. They are thickly strewn under their respective trees in the Corner road, and wagons roll over them as a shadow.

Rain and frost and unusual heat, succeeded by wind, all have to do with the fall of the leaf. No doubt the leaves suddenly ripen to their fall in intense heat, such as this, just as peaches, etc., over softened and ripened, fall. 

As I go through Hubbard’s fields, I see that the cows have got into the shade of trees as in July. 

The black birch in this grove is in the midst of its fall, perfectly yellow. But these delicately tinted leaves will wilt and fade even in your hat on your way home. Their colors are very fugacious. They must be seen on the tree or under it. You cannot easily carry this splendor home. 

The tupelos appear to fall early. I have not seen one with leaves since the 16th. 

It is so warm that even the tipulidae appear to prefer the shade. There they continue their dance, balancing to partners, as it seems, and by a fine hum remind me of summer still, when now the air generally is rather empty of insect sounds. 

Also 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. 

There is a haze between me and the nearest woods, as thick as the thickest in summer. 

My black clothes are white with the gossamer they have caught in coming through the fields, for it streams from every stubble, though it is not remarkably abundant. Flocks of this gossamer, like tangled skeins, float gently through the quiet air as high as my head, like white parachutes to unseen balloons. 

From the higher ground west of the stump-fence field. The stagnant river gleams like liquid gossamer in the sun, and I can hardly distinguish the sparkle occasioned by an insect from the white breast of a duck. 

Methinks the jay, panting with heat, is silenced for a time. 

Green leaves are doubtless handsome in their season, but now that we behold these ripe ones, we are inclined to think that the former are handsome somewhat as green fruits are, as green apples and melons. It would give our eyes the dysentery to look only on green leaves always. At this season each leaf becomes a laboratory in which the fairest and brightest colors are compounded. 

There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you. 

Hickories, and some oaks even, are now overdone. They remind me of a loaf of brown bread perfectly baked in the oven, in whose cracks I see the yellowish inside contrasting with the brown crust. Some small red maples still stand yellow within the woods. 

As I look over the smooth gleaming surface of White Pond, I am attracted by the sun-sparkles on it, as if fiery serpents were crossing to and fro. Yet if you were there you would find only insignificant insects. As I come up from the pond, I am grateful for the fresh easterly breeze at last thickening the haze on that side and driving it in on us, for Nature must preserve her equilibrium. However, it is not much cooler. 

As I approached the pond, I saw a hind in a potato field (digging potatoes), who stood stock-still for ten minutes to gaze at me in mute astonishment, till I had sunk into the woods amid the hills about the pond, and when I emerged again, there he was, motionless still, on the same spot, with his eye on me, resting on his idle hoe, as one might watch at the mouth of a fox’s hole to see him come out. Perchance he may have thought nihil humanum, etc., or else he was transfixed with thought, — which is worth a bushel or two of potatoes, whatever his employer may say, — contrasting his condition with my own, and though he stood so still, civilization made some progress. But I must hasten away or he'll lose his day. 

I was as indifferent to his eyeshot as a tree walking for I am used to such things. Perchance he will relate his adventure when he gets home at night, and what he has seen, though he did not have to light a candle this time. I am in a fair way to become a valuable citizen to him, as he is to me. 

He raises potatoes in the field for me; I raise curiosity in him. He stirs the earth; I stir him. 

What a power am I! I cause the potatoes to rot in the ground. I affect distant markets surely. But he shall not spoil my day; I will get in my harvest nevertheless. This will be nuts to him when the winter evenings come; he will tell his dream then. Talk of reaping-machines! I did not go into that field at all. I did not meddle with the potatoes. He was the only crop I gathered at a glance. Perchance he thought, “I harvest potatoes; he harvests me!” 

W. W. introduced me to his brother in the road. The latter was not only a better-dressed but a higher-cultured man than the other, yet looking remarkably like him, —his brother! In all cases we esteem rather the suggested ideal than the actual man, and it is remarkable that so many men have an actual brother, an improved edition of themselves, to whom we are introduced at last. Is he his brother, or his other self? I expect to be introduced to the ideal Mr. W. one of these days and then cut the acquaintance of the actual one. 

It is remarkable that yellow and bright scarlet in the autumnal tints are generally interchangeable. I see it now even in the case of the scarlet oak, for here is a yellow one. Shade turns scarlet to yellow. So you would say that scarlet was intense yellow, more cooked, nearer the sun, like Mars. 

Red maple is either scarlet or yellow, Rhus Toxicodendron, etc., etc. So with black scrub oaks, etc., etc. Many plants which in the summer show a few red or scarlet leaves at length are all yellow only, as horehound now. Others begin with yellow and end with a brilliant scarlet.

The large crickets now swarm in dry paths, each at the mouth of its burrow, as I notice when crossing to Martial Miles’s. 

The broad hairy leaves or blades of the Panicum clandestinum are turned to a very dark purple in cultivated potato-fields. 

A white-throated sparrow.  

On Money-Diggers’ Hill-side, the Andropogon scoparius now stands in tufts two feet high by one wide, with little whitish plumes along the upper half of its reddish fawn-colored (?) culms. 

Now in low grounds the different species of bidens or beggar’s-ticks adhere to your clothes. These bidents, tridents, quadridents are shot into you by myriads of unnoticed foes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1858

A  tree walking. See Mark 8:24 (“And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.”)

There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you. See note to December 1(8, 1856 ("stepping westward seem to be / a kind of heavenly destiny.”); Walking (“Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

The black birch in this grove is in the midst of its fall, perfectly yellow. See October 1, 1854 ("The young black birches about Walden, next the south shore, are now commonly clear pale yellow, very distinct at distance.”); October 3, 1858 ("About the pond I see maples of all their tints, and black birches (on the southwest side) clear pale yellow”); October 14, 1857 (“I see, in Hubbard's Grove, a large black birch at the very height of its change. Its leaves a clear, rich yellow; many strew the ground.”); October 22, 1855 (“As I pass this grove, I see the open ground strewn and colored with yellow leaves, which have been wafted from a large black birch”)

Flocks of this gossamer, like tangled skeins, float gently through the quiet air as high as my head, like white parachutes to unseen balloons. See October 26, 1854 ("As warm as summer. . . .I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhereI”); October 17, 1855 ("A fine Indian-summer afternoon. There is much gossamer on the button-bushes, now bare of leaves, and on the sere meadow-grass, looking toward the sun, in countless parallel lines, like the ropes which connect the masts of a vessel."); October 20, 1856 (“Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line.”)

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. See July 19, 1851 ("I see yellow butterflies in pairs, pursuing each other a rod or two into the air, and now, as he had bethought himself of the danger of being devoured by a passing bird, he descends with a zigzag flight to the earth, and the other follows. " ) See also  July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road...”); July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road. “); July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places.") ;  September 3, 1854 (“I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier.”); September 4, 1856 ("Butterflies in road a day or two.”);  September 11, 1852 ("I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and singly only."); September 13, 1858 ("Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.”); September 19, 1859 (" See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. One flutters across between the horse and the wagon safely enough, though it looks as if it would be run down."); October 7, 1857 ("Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there.”); October 18, 1856 (“I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside”) and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

There is a haze between me and the nearest woods, as thick as the thickest in summer. See October 19, 1855 ("It is a very pleasant afternoon, quite still and cloudless, with a thick haze concealing the distant hills. Does not this haze mark the Indian summer?)

I expect to be introduced to the ideal Mr. W. one of these days and then cut the acquaintance of the actual one. [under construction idealizing a friend]

I saw a hind in a potato field (digging potatoes), who stood stock-still for ten minutes to gaze at me in mute astonishment, till I had sunk into the woods . See September 27, 1858 ("The farmers digging potatoes on shore pause a moment to watch my sail and bending mast."); September 21, 1859 ("The farmers on all sides are digging their potatoes, so prone to their work that they do not see me going across lots.")

Bidens or beggar’s-ticks adhere to your clothes shot into you by myriads of unnoticed foes. See October 12, 1851(The seeds of the bidens, or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them.”); October 23, 1853 ("I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days. A storm of arrows these weeds have showered on me, as I went through their moats. How irksome the task to rid one's self of them! We are fain to let some adhere. Through thick and thin I wear some; hold on many days. In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. “) and note to Septemher 29, 1856 (“Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes, — often piece of a saw blade with three teeth.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Great Bidens

Wind and rain and frost

and heat all have to do with

the fall of the leaf.

Beggar’s-ticks adhere

to your clothes, shot into you

by unnoticed foes.

Clark, Brown, Melvin, and the robins in Easterbrooks Country.

October 20  

October 20, 2017

P. M. – To the Easterbrooks Country. 

I go along the riverside and by Dakin the pumpmaker's. 

There is a very strong northwest wind, Novemberish and cool, raising waves on the river and admonishing to prepare for winter. 

I see two Chenopodium album with stems as bright purple and fair as the poke has been, and the calyx lobes enveloping the seeds the same color. 

Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees. 

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. He also added that he had found some apples in the woods, and as he had n’t anything to carry them in, he put 'em in his shoes. They were queer-looking trays to carry fruit in. How many he got in along toward the toes, I don’t know. I noticed, too, that his pockets were stuffed with them. His old tattered frock coat was hanging in strips about the skirts, as were his pantaloons about his naked feet. He appeared to have been out on a scout this gusty afternoon, to see what he could find, as the youngest boy might. It pleased me to see this cheery old man, with such a feeble hold on life, bent almost double, thus enjoying the evening of his days. Far be it from me to call it avarice or penury, this childlike delight in finding something in the woods or fields and carrying it home in the October evening, as a trophy to be added to his winter's store. Oh, no; he was happy to be Nature's pensioner still, and bird- . like to pick up his living. Better his robin than your turkey, his shoes full of apples than your barrels full; they will be sweeter and suggest a better tale. He can afford to tell how he got them, and we to listen. There is an old wife, too, at home, to share them and hear how they were obtained. Like an old squirrel shuf ling to his hole with a nut. Far less pleasing to me the loaded wain, more suggestive of avarice and of spiritual penury. 

This old man's cheeriness was worth a thousand of the church's sacraments and memento mori's. It was better than a prayerful mood. It proves to me old age as tolerable, as happy, as infancy. I was glad of an occasion to suspect that this afternoon he had not been at “work” but living somewhat after my own fashion (though he did not explain the axe), — had been out to see what nature had for him, and now was hasten ing home to a burrow he knew, where he could warm his old feet. If he had been a young man, he would probably have thrown away his apples and put on his shoes when he saw me coming, for shame. But old age is manlier; it has learned to live, makes fewer apologies, like infancy. This seems a very manly man. I have known him within a few years building stone wall by himself, barefooted. 

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. 

I see where squirrels, apparently, have gnawed the apples left in the road. 

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. 

I see the yellowish election-cake fungi. Those large chocolate-colored ones have been burst some days (at least). 

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. The yellow birches are generally bare. The sassafras in Sted Buttrick's pasture near to E. Hubbard's Wood, nearly so; leaves all withered. Much or most of the fever-bush still green, though somewhat wrinkled." 

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. It is pleasanter to me to meet him with his gun or with his baskets than to meet some portly caterer for a family, basket on arm, at the stalls of Quincy Market. Better Melvin's pignuts than the others' shagbarks. It is to be ob served that the best things are generally most abused, and so are not so much enjoyed as the worst. Shag barks are eaten by epicures with diseased appetites; pignuts by the country boys who gather them. So wood. 

Melvin says he has caught partridges in his hands. If there’s only one hole, knows they’ve not gone out. Sometimes shoots them through the snow. 

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, seeming to issue from between the pines or other trees, as if it were they that were promenading there, not I. 

That very dense and handsome maple and pine grove opposite the pond-hole on this old Carlisle road is Ebby Hubbard's. [Sted Buttrick's, according to Melvin.] Melvin says there are those alive who remember mowing there. Hubbard loves to come with his axe in the fall or winter and trim up his woods. 

Melvin tells me that Skinner says he thinks he heard a wildcat scream in E. Hubbard's Wood, by the Close. It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats. They had better look out, or he will skin them, for that seems to have been the trade of his ancestors. How long Nature has manoeuvred to bring our Skinner within ear-shot of that wildcat's scream! Saved Ebby's wood to be the scene of it! Ebby, the wood-saver. 

Melvin says that Sted sold the principal log of one of those pasture oaks to Garty for ten dollars and got several cords besides. What a mean bribe to take the life of so noble a tree! 

Wesson is so gouty that he rarely comes out-of-doors, and is a spectacle in the street; but he loves to tell his old stories still! How, when he was stealing along to get a shot at his ducks, and was just upon them a red squirrel sounded the alarm, chickaree chickaree chickaree, and off they went; but he turned his gun upon the squirrel to avenge himself. 

It would seem as if men generally could better appreciate honesty of the John Beatton stamp, which gives you your due to a mill, than the generosity which habitually throws in the half-cent.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1857

Apples are gathered; only the ladders here and there, left leaning against the trees. See October 5, 1857 (“I see in most orchards the apples in heaps under the trees, and ladders slanted against their twiggy masses.”)

Yellowish election-cake fungi. See note to October 20, 1856 (“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. Some of those spread chocolate-colored ones have many grubs in them, though dry and dusty.")


What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! See June 10, 1853 ("What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?. . . It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s.Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? . . .Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country?")

Apples all gathered.

Only ladders here and there

lean against the trees.

Think I hear the very faint gnah of a nuthatch

October 20. 

October 20.

P. M. — To Hill, to look for ground squirrel nests.

The river-banks have now assumed almost their November aspect. The button-bushes are nearly bare. 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. 

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. 

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. Some of those spread chocolate-colored ones have many grubs in them, though dry and dusty. 

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. 

Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Beckii nor Polygonum amphibium to my knowledge this year, nor have I found any myrio- phyllum. 

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. 

Looking up the side of the hill toward the sun, I see a little gossamer on the sweet-fern, etc.; and, from my boat, little flocks of white gossamer occasionally, three quarters of an inch long, in the air or caught on twigs, as if where a spider had hauled in his line.

I think that all spiders can walk on water, for when, last summer, I knocked one off my boat by chance, he ran swiftly back to the boat and climbed up, as if more to avoid the fishes than the water. This would account for those long lines stretched low over the water from one grass stem to another. I see one of them now five or six feet long and only three or four inches above the surface, and it is remarkable that there is no perceptible sag to it, weak as the line must be. 

The pin-weeds are now bare, and their stem and fruit turned a dark brown. 

The thorns on the hill are all bare. 

There are fewer turtles, now and for some time, out sunning. A very little Solidago nemoralis in one place from the axil. 

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.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1856

A great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi.  See October 20, 1857 ("I see the yellowish election-cake fungi."); See also  October 29, 1855 ("There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pine”); July 29, 1853 (“ . . .small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake atop,. . .”). See also Concord: A Sense of Place, Octoberr 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

 Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . . the nuthatch is heard again. See 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. ...”); December 1, 1857 ("I thus always begin to hear this bird on the approach of winter, as if it did not breed here, but wintered here.([but] Hear it all the fall (and occasionally through the summer of ’59).)”) Compare July 12, 1860 ("Hear a nuthatch in the street. So they breed here."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch

Nuthatch heard again

and the small woodpecker seen 

amid the bare twigs.

The scent of the year, passing away

October 20

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. It is the scent of the year, passing away like a decaying fungus, but leaving a rich mould, I trust. 

October 20, 2015

P. M. — To Nawshawtuct. 
. . .

I see on the dead top of a hickory, twittering very much like swallows, eighteen and more bluebirds, perhaps preparing to migrate. 

I have collected and split up now quite a pile of driftwood, – rails and riders and stems and stumps of trees, – perhaps half or three quarters of a tree. It is more amusing  not only to collect this with my boat and bring [it] up from the river on my back, but to split it also, than it would be to speak to a farmer for a load of wood and to saw and split that.  

Each stick I deal with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its history  . . . Thus one half the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy.

Some of my acquaintances have been wondering why I took all this pains, bringing some nearly three miles by water and have suggested various reasons for it. I tell them in my despair of making them understand me that it is a profound secret, – which it has proved, – yet I did hint to them that one reason was that I wanted to get it. 

I take some satisfaction in eating my food, as well as in being nourished by it. I feel well at dinner-time as well as after it . . . 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. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1855

Agreeable to me is the scent of the withered and decaying leaves It is the scent of the year, passing away but leaving a rich mould, See October 20, 1853 ("How beautiful they go to their graves! — painted of a thousand hues. . . .They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay."); See also 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 17, 1857 (" How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! ")

Eighteen and more bluebirds, perhaps preparing to migrate. See October 1, 1853 ("Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about."); October 4, 1859 (' The birds seem to delight in these first fine days of the fall, in the warm, hazy light, — robins, bluebirds (in families on the almost bare elms), phcebes, and probably purple finches.  . . .I hear half-strains from many of them, as the song sparrow, bluebird, etc., and the sweet phe-be of the chickadee.”); October 10, 1851 ("The air this morning is full of bluebirds, and again it is spring."); November 3, 1853 ("Heard a bluebird about a week ago.") See also October 22, 1853 (" One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct, — . . . thus to obtain his winter's wood, — charmed me unspeakably"); November 4, 1858 ("I took out my glass, and beheld Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, in his short blue frock, short and square-bodied, as broad as for his height he can afford to be, getting his winter's wood; for this is one of the phenomena of the season.")

Agreeable to me

the scent of the withered leaves –

the year, passing away.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The scent of the year, passing away

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 ©  2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-551020

A Book of the Seasons: October 20

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 20 

October 20, 2018

Think not your journey

to the mountantop is lost

that you have no glass.

October 20, 1852

Beautiful they go 

painted of a thousand hues, 

oak maple and birch. 

How pleasant to walk

over beds of these fresh crisp

rustling fallen leaves.

Beautiful they go

painted of a thousand hues –

clean, light and frisky.

Merrily they go

scampering over the earth

selecting their graves.

HDT ~ October 20, 1853 

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

Do not think the

journey to the mountaintop is lost

  that  you have no glass.

#Thoreau October 20, 1852

The black birch in this 

grove is in the midst of its fall,

perfectly yellow.

But these tinted leaves 

wilt and fade on your way home,

even in your hat.

Their fleeting colors

must be seen on the tree,

or under it.

October 20, 1858

The black birch in this 

grove is in the midst of its fall,

perfectly yellow.

October 20, 1858

But these delicately tinted leaves will wilt and fade even in your hat on your way home

But these tinted leaves 

wilt and fade even in your 

hat on your way home.

October 20, 1858

Their colors are very fugacious . They must be seen on the tree or under it .

Their fleeting colors

must be seen on the tree

or under it.

October 20, 1858

How pleasant to walk 

over beds of these fresh, crisp, 

rustling fallen leaves.

October 20, 1853

Beautiful they go

painted of a thousand hues,

trooping to their graves.

October 20, 1853

Merrily they go 

scampering over the earth, 

selecting their graves.

October 20, 1853

Soon after sunrise

the shadow of the mountain

rapidly contracts.

Sunrise looking west:
conical mountain shadow
rapidly contracts.
October 20, 1854

Agreeable to me
the scent of the withered leaves,
the year, passing away.
October 20, 1855

Gray twigs and brown leaves,

the river-banks now assume 

their November aspect. 

October 20, 1856

Nuthatch heard again

and the small woodpecker seen 

amid the bare twigs.

October 20, 1856

Apples all gathered.
Only ladders here and there
lean against the trees.
October 20, 1857

Wind and rain and frost
and heat all have to do with
the fall of the leaf.
October 20, 1858

Beggar’s-ticks adhere

to your clothes, shot into you

by unnoticed foes.

October 20, 1858

The coldest day yet,
finger-cold as I come home,
hands find their pocket.
October 20, 1859


A straggling flock of
migrating crows contends with
the strong northwest wind.
October 20, 1859

October 20, 2013

October 20, 2015

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, 2018

October 20, 2021

October 20, 2023

October 20, 2025

October 20, 2021

October 20, 2018

October 20,  2013

 

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 © 2009-2018

Sunrise from the mountain-top

October 20

October 20, 2018

See the sun rise from the mountain-top. 

This is the time to look westward. All the villages, steeples, and houses on that side were revealed; but on the east all the landscape was a misty and gilded obscurity.

It was worth the while to see westward the countless hills and fields now white with frost. 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. 

Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State, its apex resting on the Green or Hoosac Mountains, appearing as a deep-blue section of a cone there. It rapidly contracted, and its apex approached the mountain itself, and when about three miles distant the whole conical shadow was very distinct. 

The shadow of the mountain makes some minutes’ difference in the time of sunrise to the inhabitants of Hubbardston, within a few miles west.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 20, 1854

It was worth the while to see westward the countless hills and fields now white with frost. See October 20, 1852 ("No doubt, I could have seen further with a glass, and particular objects more distinctly, - 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.")

Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State. See 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"); June 3, 1858 ("It was still hazy, and we did not see the shadow of the mountain until it was comparatively short.")

October 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 20

Sunrise looking west –
conical mountain shadow
rapidly contracts.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Sunrise from the mountain-top

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-541020