A gossamer day, the departing summer.

 

October 31. 

It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon . . . I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day.

I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem or rush to another, sometimes seven or eight feet distant, horizontally and only four or five inches above the water. When I look further, I find that they are everywhere and on everything, sometimes forming conspicuous fine white gossamer webs on the heads of grasses, or suggesting an Indian bat. They are so abundant that they seem to have been suddenly produced in the atmosphere by some chemistry, spun out of air I know not for what purpose.

I remember that in Kirby and Spence it is not allowed that the spider can walk on the water to carry his web across from rush to rush, but here I see myriads of spiders on the water, making some kind of progress, and one at least with a line attached to him. True they do not appear to walk well, but they stand up high and dry on the tips of their toes, and are blown along quite fast. They are of various sizes and colors, though mostly a greenish-brown or else black; some very small.

These gossamer lines are not visible unless between you and the sun. We pass some black willows, now of course quite leafless, and when they are between us and the sun they are so completely covered with these fine cobwebs or lines, mainly parallel to one another, that they make one solid woof, a misty woof, against the sun. They are not drawn taut, but curved downward in the middle, like the rigging of vessels, - the ropes which stretch from mast to mast, - as if the fleets of a thousand Lilliputian nations were collected one behind another under bare poles. But when we have floated a few feet further, and thrown the willow out of the sun's range, not a thread can be seen on it.

I landed and walked up and down the causeway and found it the same there, the gossamer reaching across the causeway, though not necessarily supported on the other side. They streamed southward with the slight zephyr. As if the year were weaving her shroud out of light.

It seemed only necessary that the insect have a point d'appui; and then, wherever you stood and brought the leeward side of its resting-place between you and the sun, this magic appeared.

They were streaming in like manner southward from the railing of the bridge, parallel waving threads of light, producing a sort of flashing in the air. You saw five or six feet in length from one position, but when I moved one side I saw as much more, and found that a great many, at least, reached quite across the bridge from side to side, though it was mere accident whether they caught there. –though they were continually broken by unconscious travellers.

Most, indeed, were slanted slightly upward, rising about one foot in going four and, in like manner, they were streaming from the south rail over the water, I know not how far. And there were the spiders on the rail that produced them, similar to those on the water.

Fifteen rods off, up the road, beyond the bridge, they looked like a shimmering in the air in the bare tree-tops, the finest, thinnest gossamer veil to the sun, a dim wall. I am at a loss to say what purpose they serve, and am inclined to think that they are to some extent attached to objects as they float through the atmosphere; for I noticed, before I had gone far, that my grape-vines in a basket in the boat had got similar lines stretching from one twig to another, a foot or two, having undoubtedly caught them as we paddled along. It might well be an electric phenomenon.

The air appeared crowded with them. It was a wonder they did not get into the mouth and nostrils, or that we did not feel them on our faces , or continually going and coming amid them did not whiten our clothes more. And yet one with his back to the sun, walking the other way, would observe nothing of all this. Only stand so as to bring the south side of any tree, bush, fence, or other object between you and the sun.

Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumn that this phenomenon is seen, as if that fine vapor of the morning were spun into these webs. According to Kirby and Spence, "in Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn that they are there metaphorically called 'Der fliegender Sommer' (the flying or departing summer)"."

What can possess these spiders thus to run all at once to every the least elevation, and let off this wonderful stream?

Harris tells me he does not know what it means. Sophia thought that thus at last they emptied themselves and wound up, or, I suggested, unwound, themselves, - cast off their mortal coil. It looks like a mere frolic spending and wasting of themselves, of their vigor, now that there is no further use for it, their prey, perchance, being killed or banished by the frost.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1853

See also October 31, 1853 

A Gossamer day.  See November 2, 1853 ({The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones.");  October 26, 1854 ("I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhere."); October 31, 1858 ("It is a fine day, Indian-summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees") November 1, 1860  ("Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air."); November 15, 1858 (" Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

What can possess these spiders thus to run all at once to every the least elevation, and let off this wonderful stream? See Ballooning Spiders

A gossamer day –

As if the year were weaving

her shroud out of light.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A gossamer day

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

Greenness at the end of the year, after the fall of the leaf.

 

October 31

Cloudy still and, in the afternoon, rain, the ninth day.

The sugar maple and elm leaves are fallen, but I still see many large oaks, especially scarlet ones, which have lost very few leaves. Some scarlet oaks are pretty bright yet.

The white birches, too, still retain many yellow leaves at their very tops, having a lively flame-like look when seen against the woods.

                                                  ***

Aspidium spinulosum

In the Lee farm swamp, by the old Sam Barrett mill site, I see two kinds of ferns still green and much in fruit, apparently the Aspidium spinulosum (?) and cristatum (?).

They are also common in other swamps now. They are quite fresh in those cold and wet places and almost flattened down now. The atmosphere of the house is less congenial to them.

In the summer you might not have noticed them. Now they are conspicuous amid the withered leaves.

You are inclined to approach and raise each frond in succession, moist, trembling, fragile greenness. They linger thus in all moist clammy swamps under the bare maples and grape-vines and witch-hazels, and about each trickling spring which is half choked with fallen leaves.

What means this persistent vitality, invulnerable to frost and wet? Why were these spared when the brakes and osmundas were stricken down? They stay as if to keep up the spirits of the cold-blooded frogs which have not yet gone into the mud; that the summer may die with decent and graceful moderation, gradually,

Is not the water of the spring improved by their presence ? They fall back and droop here and there, like the plumes of departing summer, — of the departing year,

Even in them I feel an argument for immortality. Death is so far from being universal.  The same destroyer does not destroy all,

How valuable they are (with the lycopodiums) for cheerfulness.  Greenness at the end of the year, after the fall of the leaf, as in a hale old age.

To my eyes they are tall and noble as palm groves, and always some forest noble-ness seems to have its haunt under their umbrage. Each such green tuft of ferns is a grove where some nobility dwells and walks.

All that was immortal in the swamp's herbage seems here crowded into smaller compass, the concentrated greenness of the swamp. 

How dear they must be to the chickadee and the rabbit! The cool, slowly retreating rear-guard of the swamp army.

What virtue is theirs that enables them to resist the frost?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1857

Some scarlet oaks are pretty bright yet. See October 31, 1858 ("The woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

The white birches, too, still retain many yellow leaves at their very tops, having a lively flame-like look when seen against the woods. See October 22, 1855 ("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,"); October 22, 1858 (" The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame shaped top more like flames than ever now. . . . The lowermost leaves turn golden and fall first; so their autumn change is like a fire which has steadily burned up higher and higher, consuming the fuel below, till now it has nearly reached their tops.")

The Aspidium spinulosum and cristatum. See October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum, which I had not identified. Apparently Aspidium cristatum elsewhere . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum & Aspidium cristatum

A Book of the Seasons: Gossamer Days ( Why should this day be so distinguished?)

There are very few phenomena 

which can be described indifferently 

as occurring at different seasons of the year.

Henry Thoreau November 3, 1853 

Looking westward now

I see against the sunlight –

gossamer waving!

 November 3, 1857

All this is distinct

to an observant eye yet

unnoticed by most.

November 3, 1861

September 29. Looking toward the sun, some fields reflect a light sheen from low webs of gossamer which thickly cover the stubble and grass. September 29, 1858

October. 14.  There is a very little gossamer, mostly blowing off in large loops from the south side the bridge, the loose end having caught. I also see it here and there stretched across lanes from side to side, as high as my face. October 14, 1857

October 16. The lespedezas stand like frost-covered wands, and now hoary goldenrods and some bright-red blackberry vines amid the tawny grass are in harmony with the rest; and if you sharpen and rightly intend your eye you see the gleaming lines of gossamer (stretching from stubble to stubble over the whole surface) which you are breaking. How cheerful these cold but bright white waving tufts! October 16, 1859

October 17. 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 17, 1855 

October 18. To-day my shoes are whitened with the gossamer which I noticed yesterday on the meadow-grass. October 18, 1855

October 19.   Indian-summer-like and gossamer. October 19, 1860

October 20. 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.  October 20, 1856

October 20. Flocks of this gossamer, like tangled skeins, float gently through the quiet air as high as my head, like white parachutes to unseen balloons.  October 20, 1858

October 26. I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhere. October 26, 1854 

October 31. It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon . . . .  I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day. I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem or rush to another, sometimes seven or eight feet distant, horizontally and only four or five inches above the water. When I look further, I find that they are everywhere and on everything . . .They are so abundant that they seem to have been suddenly produced in the atmosphere by some chemistry, spun out of air I know not for what purpose . . . These gossamer lines are not visible unless between you and the sun. We pass some black willows, now of course quite leafless, and when they are between us and the sun they are so completely covered with these fine cobwebs or lines, mainly parallel to one another, that they make one solid woof, a misty woof, against the sun. They are not drawn taut, but curved downward in the middle, like the rigging of vessels . . . Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumn that this phenomenon is seen, as if that fine vapor of the morning were spun into these webs. According to Kirby and Spence, "in Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn that they are there metaphorically called ' Der fliegender Sommer' (the flying or departing summer)" October 31, 1853

A gossamer day –

As if the year were weaving

her shroud out of light.

October 31, 1853

October 31.  It is a fine day, Indian-summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees . . . the same sort of weather with the most pleasant in November (which last alone some allow to be Indian summer), only more to be expected. October 31, 1858

November 1. It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows and spanning the road, all stretching across the road, and yet I cannot see them in any other direction, and feel not one. It looks as if the birds would be incommoded. They have the effect of a shimmer in the air. This shimmer, moving along them as they are waved by the wind, gives the effect of a drifting storm of light. It is more like a fine snow-storm which drifts athwart your path than anything else. What is the peculiar condition of the atmosphere, to call forth this activity? If there were no sunshine, I should never find out that they existed, I should not know that I was bursting a myriad barriers. Though you break them with your person, you feel not one. Why should this day be so distinguished? November 1, 1851 

November 1. A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M . . . Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air. November 1, 1860  

November 2. The last two, this and yesterday, fine days, but not gossamer ones. November 2, 1853

November 3.   Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig, but the latter often curve upward more than the other.  November 3, 1857 [see November lights, below]

November 7.  Looking west over Wheeler’s meadow, I see that there has been much gossamer on the grass, and it is now revealed by the dewy mist which has collected on it. November 7, 1855 

November 11. Gossamer reflecting the light is another November phenomenon (as well as October). November 11, 1858 

November 13. Even after all this rain I see the streaming lines of gossamer from trees and fences.  November 13,1855 

November 15.  This afternoon has wanted no condition to make it a gossamer day, it seems to me, but a calm atmosphere. Plainly the spiders cannot be abroad on the water unless it is smooth. The one I witnessed this fall was at time of flood. May it be that they are driven out of their retreats like muskrats and snow-fleas, and spin these lines for their support? Yet they work on the causeway, too  November 15, 1853

November 15.  Gossamer, methinks, belongs to the latter part of October and first part of November; also the frost-weed and evergreen ferns. Buds and twigs (like gossamer), and the mazes made by twigs, and the silvery light on this down and the silver-haired andropogon grass to the first half of November. November 15, 1858 (see November lights, below)

November 15. A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it. As I look along over the grass toward the sun at Hosmer's field, beyond Lupine Hill, I notice the shimmering effect of the gossamer, — which seems to cover it almost like a web, — occasioned by its motion, though the air is so still. This is noticed at least forty rods off. November 15, 1859

November 19. This is a very pleasant and warm Indian-summer afternoon. Methinks we have not had one like it since October. This, too, is a gossamer day, though it is not particularly calm. My boat I find to be covered with spiders, whose fine lines soon stretch from side to side.  November 19, 1853 

December 20. I see some gossamer on the weeds above the ice. December 20, 1855

---

Gossamer-like snow flakes

November 20, 1857 ("I see a few flakes of snow, two or three only, like flocks of gossamer, straggling in a slanting direction to the ground, unnoticed by most, in a rather raw air.") April 4, 1859 ("There are dark and windy clouds on that side, of that peculiar brushy or wispy character — or rather like sheafs — which denotes wind. They only spit a little snow at last, thin and scarcely perceived, like falling gossamer.")

 

***

November lights

As I stand looking down the hill over Emerson's young wood-lot there, perhaps at 3.30 p. m., the sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs of bare young chestnuts and birches, very dense and ascendant with a marked parallelism, they remind me of the lines of gossamer at this season, being almost exactly similar to the eye. It is a true November phenomenon. November 28, 1856

 

October 16. This clear, cold, Novemberish light is inspiriting. Some twigs which are bare and weeds begin to glitter with hoary light. The very edge or outline of a tawny or russet hill has this hoary fight on it. Your thoughts sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs. October 16, 1859

October 25. In the cool Novemberish air and light we observe and enjoy the trembling shimmer and gleam of the pine-needles. I do not know why we perceive this more at this season, unless because the air is so clear and all surfaces reflect more light; and, besides, all the needles now left are fresh ones, or the growth of this year. Also I notice, when the sun is low, the light reflected from the parallel twigs of birches recently bare, etc., like the gleam from gossamer lines. This is another Novemberish phenomenon. Call these November Lights. Hers is a cool, silvery light.  October 25, 1858 

November 3.  Looking westward now, at 4 P.M., I see against the sunlight, where the twigs of a maple and black birch intermingle, a little gossamer or fine cobwebs, but much more the twigs, especially of the birch, waving slightly, reflect the light like cobwebs. It is a phenomenon peculiar to this season, when the twigs are bare and the air is clear. I cannot easily tell what is cobweb and what twig. November 3, 1857 

November 18.  Much cold, slate-colored cloud, bare twigs seen gleaming toward the light like gossamer, pure green of pines whose old leaves have fallen, reddish or yellowish brown oak leaves rustling on the hillsides, very pale brown, bleaching, almost hoary fine grass or hay in the fields, akin to the frost which has killed it, and flakes of clear yellow sunlight falling on it here and there, — such is November. November 18, 1857

November 22. A thousand bare twigs gleam like cobwebs in the sun. November 22, 1860

See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Indian Summer

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

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

The saunterer's apple.

 

October 31.  

October 31, 2016

The wild apples are now getting palatable. I find a few left on distant trees, which the farmer thinks it not worth his while to gather. He thinks that he has better in his barrels, but he is mistaken, unless he has a walker's appetite and imagination, neither of which can he have. These apples cannot be too knurly and rusty and crabbed  . . . The saunterer's apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house. The noblest of fruits is the apple. Let the most beautiful or swiftest have it.

The robins now fly in flocks.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1851

Wild apples. See September 21, 1852 ("It is an agreeable surprise to find in the midst of a swamp so large and edible a fruit as an apple."); October 27, 1855 (“I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house."); October 27, 1855 (“To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. They must be eaten in the fields. . . Some of those apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind.” “); November 4, 1855 ("It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.“); November 7, 1858 ("My apple harvest! It is to glean after the husbandman and the cows, or to gather the crop of those wild trees far away on the edges of swamps which have escaped their notice. . . . I fill my pockets on each side, and as I retrace my steps, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, in order to preserve my balance."); November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. . . Food for walkers."); December 18, 1859 ("Apples are thawed now and are very good. Their juice is the best kind of bottled cider that I know. They are all good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press.") See also December 11, 1855 ("Standing there, though in this bare November landscape, I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. ... The age of miracles is each moment thus returned. Now it is wild apples, now river reflections, now a flock of lesser redpolls.").

Frozen wild apples

soon thaw in my chamber and

yield a sweet cider.

December 19, 1850

Robins flocking. See October 31, 1853 ("On the hill, I see flocks of robins, flitting from tree to tree and peeping.") See also October 20, 1857 ("The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them."); November 3, 1857 (" I see on many rocks, etc., the seeds of the barberry, which have been voided by birds, – robins, no doubt, chiefly. How many they must thus scatter over the fields, spreading the barberry far and wide! That has been their business for a month.")

This tallest aspen.

October 31, 2023

The other day

Walking through the woods

I came to a tall aspen

that I had not seen

standing in the midst

of the woods in the next town,

leaves yellowish green.

All summer – and it

chances for so many years  –

it has been concealed.

Perhaps the largest

of its species that I know,

I stumbled on it

by mere accident

after walking a couple

hours the other day.

Peculiar in 

its solitude it seemed the

obscurest of trees.

From this hilltop

Now to my surprise

a mile off across the pond

I see one large tree

which I distinguish

by form and color to be

my new acquaintance

Tremulifomis

the only yellow I see –

my tallest aspen

the most distinct tree

in all the landscape coming

half-way to meet me.

October 31, 1858

October 29, 2022

See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know.") and December 15 , 1841 ("The trees have come down to the bank to see the river go by.");  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens; November 4, 1858 (“The actual objects which one person will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the persons are different . . .We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it”); November 28, 1858 (“And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge!”)

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, 

I came to the base of a tall aspen, 

which I do not remember to have seen before, 

standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, 

still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. 

It is perhaps the largest of its species that I know. 

It was by merest accident that I stumbled on it, 

and if I had been sent to find it, 

I should have thought it to be, as we say, 

like looking for a needle in a haymow.

All summer, and it chances for so many years, 

it has been concealed to me; 

but now, walking in a different direction,

to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, 

and looking off just before sunset, 

when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, 

I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color. 
Such is its fame, at last, and reward for living in that solitude and obscurity.

It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape, 

and would be the cynosure of all eyes here. 

Thus it plays its part in the choir. 

I made a minute of its locality,

glad to know where so large an aspen grew. 

Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity.

It seemed the obscurest of trees. 

Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence . . .

It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, 

coming half-way to meet me,
and now the acquaintance 

thus propitiously formed will,
I trust, be permanent.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Tallest Aspen

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/HDTaspen

We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

October 31. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

Our currants bare; how long? 

The Italian poplars are now a dull greenish yellow, not nearly so fair as the few leaves that had turned some time ago. 

Some silvery abeles are the same color.  

I go over the Hubbard Bridge causeway. The young Salix alba osiers are just bare, or nearly so, and the yellow twigs accordingly begin to show. 

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. That warm weather of the 19th and 20th was, methinks, the same sort of weather with the most pleasant in November (which last alone some allow to be Indian summer), only more to be expected. 

I see many red oaks, thickly leaved, fresh and at the height of their tint. These are pretty clear yellow. It is much clearer yellow than any black oak, but some others are about bare. These and scarlet oaks, which are yet more numerous, are the only oaks not withered that I notice to-day, except one middle-sized white oak probably protected from frost under Lee’s Cliff. 

Between the absolutely deciduous plants and the evergreens are all degrees, not only those which retain their withered leaves all winter, but those, commonly called evergreen, which, though slow to change, yet acquire at last a ruddy color while they keep their leaves, as the lambkill and water andromeda (?).

Get a good sight on Conantum of a sparrow (such as I have seen in flocks some time), which utters a sharp te te-te quickly repeated as it flies, sitting on a wall three or four rods off. I see that it is rather long and slender, is perhaps dusky-ash above with some black backward; has a pretty long black bill, a white ring about eye, white chin and line under check, a black (or dark) spotted breast and dirty cream-color beneath; legs long and slender and perhaps reddish-brown, two faint light bars on wings; but, what distinguishes it more, it keeps gently jerking or tossing its tail as it sits, and when a flock flies over you see the tails distinctly black beneath. Though I detected no yellow, yet I think from the note that it must be the shore lark (such as I saw March 24th) in their fall plumage. They are a common bird at this season, I think. 

I see a middle-sized red oak side by side with a black one under Lee’s Cliff. The first is still pretty fresh, the latter completely withered. The withered leaves of the first are flat, apparently thin, and a yellowish brown;those of the black are much curled and a very different and dark brown, and look thicker. 

Barberry generally is thickly leaved and only some what yellowish or scarlet, say russet. 

I tasted some of the very small grapes on Blackberry Steep, such as I had a jelly made of. Though shrivelled, and therefore ripe, they are very acid and inedible. 

The slippery elm has a few scattered leaves on it, while the common close by is bare. So I think the former is later to fall. You may well call it bare. 

The cedar at Lee’s Cliff has apparently just fallen, — almost. 

As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red.

Some great ones lift their red backs high above the woods near the Codman place, like huge roses with a myriad fine petals, and some more slender ones, in a small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, in the very horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove and shouldering them with their red coats, — an intense, burning red which would lose some of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take to ward them, — look like soldiers in red amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too. 

Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light, but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called “gardeners,” working here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves, for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at this distance. They are unanimously red. The focus of their reflected,[color] is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree, especially in the horizon, becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun, the redness grows and glows like a cloud. It only has some comparatively dull-red leaves for a nucleus and to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. I have no doubt that you would be disappointed in the brilliancy of those trees if you were to walk to them. You see a redder tree than exists. It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. The scarlet oak asks the clear sky and the brightness of the Indian summer. These bring out its color. If the sun goes into a cloud they become indistinct. 

These are my China asters, my late garden flowers. It costs me nothing for a gardener. The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil of your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.

To my surprise, the only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. It, too, is far more yellow at this distance than it was close at hand, and so are the Lombardy poplars in our streets. The Salix alba, too, looks yellower at a distance now. Their dull-brown and green colors do not report them selves so far, while the yellow crescit eundo, and we see the sun reflected in it. 

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before, standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. It is perhaps the largest of its species that I know. It was by merest accident that I stumbled on it, and if I had been sent to find it, I should have thought it to be, as we say, like looking for a needle in a haymow. All summer, and it chances for so many years, it has been concealed to me; but now, walking in a different direction, to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, and looking off just before sunset, when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color. 

Such is its fame, at last, and reward for living in that solitude and obscurity. It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape, and would be the cynosure of all eyes here. Thus it plays its part in the choir. I made a minute of its locality, glad to know where so large an aspen grew. Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity. It seemed the obscurest of trees. Now it was seen to be equally peculiar for its distinctness and prominence. Each tree (in October) runs up its flag and we know [what] colors it sails under. The sailor sails, and the soldier marches, under a color which will report his virtue farthest, and the ship’s “private signals” must be such as can be distinguished at the greatest distance. The eye, which distinguishes and appreciates color, is itself the seat of color in the human body. 

It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me, and now the acquaintance thus propitiously formed will, I trust, be permanent. 

Of the three (?) mocker-nuts on Conantum top only the southernmost is bare, the rest are thickly leaved yet. 

The Viburnum Lentago is about bare. 

That hour-glass apple shrub near the old Conantum house is full of small yellow fruit. Thus it is with them. By the end of some October, when their leaves have fallen, you see them glowing with an abundance of wild fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds them. Such is their pursuit of knowledge through difficulties. Though they may have taken the hour-glass form, think not that their sands are run out. So is it with the rude, neglected genius from amid the country hills; he suffers many a check at first, browsed on by fate, springing in but a rocky pasture, the nursery of other creatures there, and he grows broad and strong, and scraggy and thorny, hopelessly stunted, you would say, and not like a sleek orchard tree all whose forces are husbanded and the precious early years not lost, and when at first, within this rind and hedge, the man shoots up, you see the thorny scrub of his youth about him, and he walks like an hour-glass, aspiring above, it is true, but held down and impeded by the rubbish of old difficulties overcome, and you seem to see his sands running out. But at length, thanks to his rude culture, he attains to his full stature, and every vestige of the thorny hedge which clung to his youth disappears, and he bears golden crops of Porters or Baldwins, whose fame will spread through all orchards for generations to come, while that thrifty orchard tree which was his competitor will, perchance, have long since ceased to bear its engrafted fruit and decayed.

The beach plum is withering green, say with the apple trees, which are half of them bare. 

Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 31, 1858

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees. See October 31, 1853 ("t is a beautiful , warm and calm Indian- summer afternoon . . . I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day . . . the gossamer reaching across the causeway . . . streamed southward with the slight zephyr. As if the year were weaving her shroud out of light . . . They were streaming in like manner southward from the railing of the bridge  parallel waving threads of light, producing a sort of flashing in the air ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Until the sun thus lit them up you would not have believed that there were so many redcoats in the forest army. See October 24, 1858 ("The scarlet oak. . . is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees . . .is now in its glory. ");October 25, 1858 ("[I]t is remarkable how evenly they are distributed over the hills, by some law not quite understood.")

It becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. … It is a strong red, which gathers strength from the air on its way to your eye. It is partly borrowed fire, borrowed of the sun. Compare October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. The air is filled with a remarkably vaporous haze.")

The only yellow that I see amid the universal red and green and chocolate is one large tree top in the forest, a mile off in the east, across the pond, which by its form and color I know to be my late acquaintance the tall aspen (tremuliformis) of the 29th. See October 29, 1858 ("Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know.")


Larches fairly begun to fall; so they are at height. See November 1, 1857 ("The larches are at the height of their change."); November 4, 1855 ("Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall.")