25 October 1852 – 31 October 1852

Monday. P. M.— Down river to Ball’s Hill in boat. Another perfect Indian-summer day. One of my oars makes a creaking sound like a block in a harbor, such a sound as would bring tears into an old sailor’s eyes. It suggests to me adventure and seeking one’s fortune. Turtles are still seen dropping into the water (Emys picta). The white maples have mostly shed their leaves, but those which are beneath the level of the bank, protected by it, still hold on. This leafy stratum rises exactly to a level with the bank. The water for some time has been clear of weeds mostly, but looks cool for fishes. We get into the lee of the hill near Abner Buttrick’s (?), where is smooth wa- ter, and here it 1s very warm and sunny under the pitch pines, and some small bushy white asters still survive. The autumnal tints grow gradually darker and duller, but not less rich to my eye. And now a hillside near the river exhibits the darkest, crispy reds and browns of every hue, all agreeably blended. At the foot, next the meadow, stands a front rank of smoke- like maples bare of leaves, intermixed with yellow birches. Higher up, red oaks of various shades of dull red, with yellowish, perhaps black oaks intermixed, and walnuts, now brown, and near the hilltop, or rising above the rest, perhaps, a still yellowish oak, and here and there amid the rest or in the foreground on the meadow, dull ashy salmon-colored white oaks large and small, all these contrasting with the clear liquid, sem- piternal green of pines. The sheen on the water blinds my eyes. The ziza- nia stands still, with its slender spires empty of grain, by the water’s edge. The Polygonum hydropiperoides is now all crisp and brown with frost. Mint is still green and wonderfully recreating to smell. I had put such things behind me. It is hard to remember lilies now. The savory-leaved aster in a sheltered place, and caducous polygala. Where large chestnuts were sawed down last winter by Walden, sprouts have come up six feet high on every side of the stump, very thick, so as to form perfect bowers in which a man might be con- cealed. Where a fire has run over such ground, I have noticed such shoots all dead and drawn or shrunk to- gether at top. The constitution of the Indian mind appears to be the very opposite to that of the white man. He is ac- quainted with a different side of nature. He measures his life by winters, not summers. His year is not mea- sured by the sun, but consists of a certain number of moons, and his moons are measured not by days, but by nights. He has taken hold of the dark side of nature; the white man, the bright side.

P. M.— Walden and Cliffs. There are no skaters on the pond now. It is cool to- day and windier. The water is rippled considerably. As I stand in the boat, the farther off the water, the bluer it is. Looking straight down, it is a dark green. Hence, apparently, the celestial blueness of those dis- tant river-reaches, when the water is agitated, so that their surfaces reflect the sky at the right angle. It is a darker blue than that of the sky itself.1. When I look down on the pond from the Peak, it is far less blue. The blue-stemmed and white goldenrod apparently survive till winter, — push up and blossom anew. And a few oak leaves in sheltered nooks do not wither. Aster undulatus. Very few crickets for a long time. At this season we seek warm sunny lees and hillsides, as that under the pitch pines by Walden shore, where we cuddle and warm ourselves in the sun as by a fire, where we may get some of its reflected as well as direct heat. Coming by Hayden’s, I see that, the sun setting, its rays, which yet find some vapor to lodge on in the clear cold air, impart a purple tinge to the mountains in the northwest. Methinks it is only in cold weather I see this. Richard Harlan, M. D., in his “ Fauna Americana ” (1825), says of man that those parts are “ most hairy, which in animals are most bare, viz. the axillee and pubes.” Harlan says the vespertilio catch insects during the crepusculum. Harlan says that when white is associated with an- other color on a dog’s tail it is always terminal, and that the observations of Desmarest confirm it.

Sunset from the Poplar Hill. A warm, moist afternoon. The clouds lift in the west, — indeed the horizon is now clear all around, —and suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. The air is filled with a remarkably vapor- ous haze. ‘The shadows of the trees on the river’s edge stretch straight a quarter of a mile into the level russet Great Meadows. The boys are gathering walnuts. Their leaves are a yellowish brown. 8 p. M.— To Cliffs. The moon beginning to wane. It is a quite warm but moist night. As I cross the railroad I hear the telegraph harp again, the undecayed oracle. Its vibra- tions are communicated through the tall pole to the surrounding earth for a considerable distance, so that I fee] them -when I stand near. And when I put my ear to a fence-rail, it 1s all alive with them, though the post with which it is connected is planted two feet from the telegraph-post; yet the rail resounded with the harp music so that a deaf man might have heard it. I hear no sound of a bird as I go up the back road; only a few faint crickets to be heard, — these the birds we are reduced to. What a puny sound this for the great globe to make! : After whatever revolutions in my moods and experi- ences, when I come forth at evening, as if from years of confinement to the house, Isee the few stars which make the constellation of the Lesser Bear in the same relative position, — the everlasting geometry of the stars. How incredible to be described are these bright points which appear in the blue sky as the darkness increases, said to be other worlds, like the berries on the hills when the summer is ripe! Even the ocean of birds, even the regions of the ether, are studded with isles. Far in this ethereal sea lie the Hesperian isles, unseen eo by day, but when the darkness comes their fires are seen from this shore, as Columbus saw the fires of San Salvador (?). The dew in the withered grass reflects the moonlight like glow-worms. That star which ac- companies the moon will not be her companion to- morrow. The forest has lost so many leaves that its floor and paths are much more checkered with light. I hear no sound but the rustling of the withered leaves, which lulls the few and silent birds to sleep, and, on the wooded hilltops, the roar of the wind. Each tree is a harp which resounds all night, though some have but a few leaves left to flutter and hum. From the Cliffs, the river and pond are exactly the color of the sky. Though the latter is slightly veiled with a thin mist, the outline of the peninsula in it is quite distinct. Even the distant fields across the river are seen to be russet by moonlight as by day, and the young pines near by are green. ‘he ground in the woods is light with fallen leaves. There is a certain tameness or civilization in the rounded lobe of the white oak leaf, very different from the wild, pointed black and red oak leaves, and in its uses and qualities the former is nearer to man. Those trees are comparatively wild whose bark alone is exten- sively used by man. Returning through Abiel Wheeler’s hillside field toward the railroad, I see the springing mullein leaves more distinct than by day. Their leaves are remarkably warm to my hand, compared with the earth or a stone. I should be glad to make my bed of them some time. Four months of the green leaf make all our summer, if I reckon from June Ist to October Ist, the growing season, and methinks there are about four months when the ground is white with snow. That would leave two months for spring and two for autumn. October the month of ripe or painted leaves; November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs. As I was eating my dinner of rice to-day, with an open window, a small species of wild bee, with many yellow rings about the abdomen, came in and alighted on the molasses pitcher. It took up the molasses quite fast, and soon made quite bare and white a consider- able space on the nose of the pitcher which was smeared with molasses; then, having loaded itself, it circled round the pitcher a few times, while I was helping myself to some molasses, and flew against a closed win- dow, but ere long, finding the open one by which it had entered, it winged its way to its nest. Probably if I had been willing to leave the window open and wait awhile, it would have returned. I heard one boy say to another in the street to-day, ‘“*You don’t know much more than a piece of putty.”