29 October 1855 – 4 November 1855

P. M. — Up Assabet. Carried my owl to the hill again. Had to shake him out of the box, for he did not go of his own accord. (He had learned to alight on his perch, and it was sur- prising how lightly and noiselessly he would hop upon it.) There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, with his horns pricked up and looking toward me. In this strong light the pupils of his eyes suddenly con- tracted and the iris expanded till they were two great brazen orbs with a centre spot merely. His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything. I was obliged to toss him up a little that he might feel his wings, and then he flapped away low and heavily to a hickory on the hillside twenty rods off. (I had let him out in the plain just east of the hill.) Thither I fol- lowed and tried to start him again. He was now on the gut vive, yet would not start. He erected his head, showing some neck, narrower than the round head above. His eyes were broad brazen rings around bul- lets of black. His horns stood quite an inch high, as not before. As I moved around him, he turned his head always toward me, till he looked directly behind himself as he sat crosswise on a bough. He behaved as if bewildered and dazzled, gathering all the light he could and ever straining his great eyes toward [you] to make out who you are, but not inclining to fly. I had to lift him again with a stick to make him fly, and then he only rose to a higher perch, where at last he seemed to seek the shelter of a thicker cluster of the sere leaves, partly crouching there. He never appeared so much alarmed as surprised and aston- ished. | When I first saw him yesterday, he sat on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the bottom of a large hemlock, amid the darkness of the evergreens that cloudy day. (It threatened to rain every moment.) At the bottom of the hollow, or eigh- teen inches beneath him, was a very soft bed of the fine green moss (hypnum) which grows on the bank close by, probably his own bed. It had been recently put there. When I moved him in his cage he would cling to the perch, though it was in a perpendicular position, one foot above another, suggesting his habit of clinging to and climbing the inside of hollow trees. I do not remember any perpendicular line in his eyes, as in those of the cat. I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders. Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pines there, and also very regular higher hemispherical ones with a regularly warted or pep- pered surface. As I was passing Merrick’s pasture, I saw and counted about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing. There is a wild apple on the hill which has to me a peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is three quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you cut it, it smells exactly like a squash-bug. I like its very acerbity. It is a sort of triumph to eat and like it, an ovation. In the fields alone are the sours and bitters of nature appreciated; just as the woodchopper eats his meal in a sunny glade in middle of a winter day, with contentment, in a degree of cold which, experienced in the house, would make the student miserable, — basks in a sunny ray and dreams of sum- mer, in a degree of cold which, felt in a chamber, would make a student wretched. They who are abroad at work are not cold; it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with cold and heat, so with sweet and sour. This natural raciness, sours and bitters, etc., which the diseased palate refuses, are the true casters and condiments. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. Apples which the farmer neglects and leaves out as unsalable, and unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are choicest fruit to the walker.! When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. ‘The scent of their decay is pleasant to me. I buy no lot in the cemetery which my townsmen have just con- secrated with a poem and an auction, paying so much for a choice. Here is room enough for me.? The swamp white oak has a fine, firm, leathery leaf with a silver under side, half of them now turned up. Oaks are now fairly brown; very few still red. Water milk- weed discounts. T have got a load of great hardwood stumps. For sympathy with my neighbors I might about as well live in China. They are to me barbarians, with their committee-works and gregariousness. Returning, I scare up a blue heron from the bathing- rock this side the Island. It is whitened by its droppings, in great splotches a foot or more wide. He has evi- dently frequented it to watch for fish there. Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles.

Wednesday. Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some bright- ness; perhaps the latest of the oaks.

Thursday. P. M.— Up Assabet, a-wood- ing. After a rain-threatening morning it is a beautiful Indian-summer day, the most remarkable hitherto and equal to any of the kind. Yet we kept fires in the fore- noon, the warmth not having got into the house. It is akin to sin to spend such a day in the house. The air is still and warm. This, too, is the recovery of the year, — as if the year, having nearly or quite accomplished - its work, and abandoned all design, were in a more favorable and poetic mood, and thought rushed in to fill the vacuum. The river is perfectly smooth. Whole schools of little minnows leap from the surface at once with a silvery gleam. The wool-grass, with its drooping head and the slender withered leaves dangling about its stem, stands in little sheaves upon its tussocks, clean dry straw, and is thus reflected in the water. This is the November shore. The maples and swamp oaks and willows are for the most part bare, but some of the oaks are partly clothed yet with withered ones [sic]. I see one white maple quite thick and green, and some black willows are thinly clad with green leaves, and many yellowish leaves are seen on the sallows rising above the bare button-bushes. Yet I see no painted tortoises out, and I think it 1s about a fortnight since I saw any.* As I pushed up the river past Hildreth’s, I saw the blue heron (probably of last Monday) arise from the shore and disappear with heavily-flapping wings around a bend in front; the greatest of the bitterns (Arde), with heavily-undulating wings, low over the water, seen against the woods, just disappearing round a bend in front; with a great slate-colored expanse of wing, suited to the shadows of the stream, a tempered blue as of the sky and dark water commingled. This is the aspect under which the Musketaquid might be repre- sented at this season: a long, smooth lake, reflecting the bare willows and button-bushes, the stubble, and the wool-grass on its tussock, a muskrat-cabin or two conspicuous on its margin amid the unsightly tops of pontedenia, and a bittern disappearing on undulating wing around a bend. The wood I get is pretty rotten. The under side of an oak which has lain for years on the miry bank is turned almost to mould, — in this I find ants, — while the upper is hard and dry. Or else it is stumps whose fangs have so rotted off that I can kick them over at last, but then I must shake out a half a peck or more of mould. I made out to get one great and heavy stump ' See forward, Nov. 11. to the water twenty rods distant by ant-like turning it over and over laboriously. It sunk my craft low in the water. Others are boughs which in the winter fell or were dragged down by the ice, their tops in the water and their butts on shore. These I saw off where they dip into the water, though the saw pinches. Returning in the twilight, I see a bat over the river.

P. M.— To Mill by Assabet. This forenoon the boys found a little black kitten about a third grown on the Island or Rock, but could not catch it. We supposed that some one had cast it in to drown it. This afternoon, as I was paddling by the Island, I saw what I thought a duck swimming down the river diagonally, to the south shore just below the grassy island, opposite the rock; then I thought it two ducks, then a muskrat. It passed out of sight round a bend. I landed and walked alongshore, and found that it was a kitten, which had just got ashore. It was quite wet excepting its back. It swam quite rapidly, the whole length of its back out, but was carried down about as fast by the stream. It had probably first crossed from the rock to the grassy island, and then from the lower end of this to the town side of the stream, on which side it may have been attracted by the noise of the town. It was rather weak and staggered as it ran, from starvation or cold, being wet, or both. A very pretty little black kitten. It is a dark, almost rainy day. Though the river appears to have risen considerably, it is not more than nine or ten inches above the lowest summer level, as I see by the bridge. Yet it brings along a little drift- wood. Whatever rails or boards have been left by the water’s edge the river silently takes up and carries away. Much small stuff from the pail-factory. The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct. ‘The autumnal dandelion sheltered by this apple-tree trunk is drooping and half closed and shows but half its yellow, this dark, late, wet day in the fall. Gathered a bag of wild apples. A great part are decayed now on the ground. The snail slug is still eat- ing them. Some have very fiery crimson spots or eyes on a very white ground. Returned, and went up the main stream. Larches are now quite yellow, — in the midst of their fall. The river-brink — at a little distance at least — is now all sere and rustling, except a few yellowed sallow leaves, though beyond in the meadows there is some fresh greenness, but cattle seem to stray wider for food than they did. ‘They are turned into the meadows now, where is all the greenness. New fences are erected to take advantage of all the fall feed. But the rank herb- age of the river’s brink is more tender and has fallen before the frosts. Many new muskrat-houses have been erected this wet weather, and much gnawed root is floating. When I look away to the woods, the oaks have a dull, dark red now, without brightness. The willow-tops on causeways have a pale, bleached, silvery, or wool-grass-like look. See some large flocks of F'. hyemalis, which fly with a clear but faint chinking chirp, and from time to time you hear quite a strain, half warbled, from them. They rise in a body from the ground and fly to the trees as you approach. There are a few tree sparrows with them. These and one small soaring hawk are all the birds I see. I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September. From my experience with wild apples I can under- stand that there may be a reason for a savage prefer- ring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.* I remember two old maids to whose house I enjoyed carrying a purchaser to talk about buying their farm in the winter, because they offered us wild apples, though with an unnecessary apology for their wildness.