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.
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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 S
eptember 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 w
ere 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.
