16 October 1854 – 22 October 1854

In the streets the ash and most of the elm trees are bare of leaves; the red maples also for the most part, apparently, at a distance. The pines, too, have fallen.

7.15 a. Ms —To Westminster by cars; thence on foot to Wachusett Mountain, four miles to Foster’s, and two miles thence to mountain-top by road. The country above Littleton (plowed ground) more or less sugared with snow, the first I have seen. We find a little on the mountain-top. The prevailing tree on this mountain, top and all, is apparently the red oak, which toward and on the top is very low and spread- ing. Other trees and shrubs which I remember on the top are beech, Populus tremuliformis, mountain-ash (looking somewhat like sumach), witch-hazel, white and yellow birch, white pine, black spruce, etc., etc. Most of the deciduous woods look as 1f dead. On the sides, beside red oak, are rock maple, yellow birch, lever-wood, beech, chestnut, shagbark, hemlock, striped maple, witch-hazel, etc., etc. With a glass you can see vessels in Boston Harbor from the summit, just north of the Waltham hills. Two white asters, the common ones, not yet quite out of bloom, — A. acuminatus and perhaps cordzfolius (hearted, with long sharp teeth). The Geranium Robertianum in bloom below the woods on the east side.

Saw 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 all apparently flat, 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 con- tracted, and its apex approached the mountain itself, and when about three miles distant the whole conical shadow was very distinct. The shadow of the moun- tain makes some minutes’ difference in the time of sunrise to the inhabitants of Hubbardston, within a few miles west. F. hyemalis, how long? Saw some very tall and large dead chestnuts in the wood between Foster’s and the mountain. Wachusett Pond appeared the best place from which to view the mountain (from a boat). Our host had picked thirty- four bushels of shagbarks last year. For the most part they do not rattle out yet, but it is time to gather them. On account of squirrels now is the time.

This and the last two days Indian-summer weather, following hard on that sprinkling of snow west of Concord. Pretty hard frosts these nights. Many leaves fell last night, and the Assabet is covered with their fleets. Now they rustle as you walk through them in the woods. Bass trees are bare. The redness of huckle- berry bushes is past its prime. I see a snapping turtle, not yet in winter quarters. The chickadees are pick- ing the seeds out of pitch pine cones.