20 September 1852 – 26 September 1852

The smooth sumachs are turning conspic- uously and generally red, apparently from frost, and here and there is a whole maple tree red, about water. In some hollows in sprout-lands, the grass and ferns are crisp and brown from frost. I suppose it is the Aster undulatus, or variable aster, with a large head of middle-sized blue flowers. The Viola sagittata has blossomed again. The Galiwm circezans (?) still, and narrow-leaved johnswort. On Heywood’s Peak by Walden. — The surface is not perfectly smooth, on account of the zephyr, and the re- flections of the woods are a little indistinct and blurred. How soothing to sit on a stump on this height, over- looking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed and again erased on the smooth and otherwise invisible surface, amid the re- flected skies! The reflected sky is of a deeper blue. How beautiful that over this vast expanse there can be no disturbance, but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again! Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on it but it is reported in lines of beauty, in circling dimples, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and those of pain are indistinguishable. How sweet the phenomena of the lake! Everything that moves on its surface produces a sparkle. The peaceful pond! The works of men shine as in the spring. The motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo!! The groundsel and hieracium down is in the air. The golden plover, they say, has been more than usually plenty here this year. Droves of cattle have for some time been coming down from up-country. How distinctly each thing in nature is marked! as the day by a little yellow sunlight, so that the sluggard cannot mistake it.

P. M.— To Conantum. The small skull-cap and cress and the mullein still in bloom. I see pigeon woodpeckers oftener now, with their light rears. Birches and elms begin to turn yel- low, and ferns are quite yellow or brown in many places. I see many tall clustered bluish asters by the brooks, like the A. undulatus. The blue-stemmed goldenrod is abundant, bright and in its prime. The maples begin to be ripe. How beautiful when a whole maple on the edge of a swamp is like one great scarlet fruit, full of ripe juices! A sign of the ripening. Every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, is aglow.’ ‘The woodbine is red, too, and its berries are bluing. The flattened black berries of the cucumber-root, with the triangular bases of its leaves tinged red beneath, as a sort of cup for them. My red ball fungus blossoms in the path in the midst of its jelly. As I was walking through the maple swamp by the Corner Spring, I was surprised to see apples on the ground, and at first supposed that somebody had dropped them, but, looking up, I detected a wild apple tree, as tall and slender as the young maples and not more than five inches in diameter at the ground. This had blossomed and borne fruit this year. ‘The apples were quite mellow and of a very agreeable flavor, though they had a rusty-scraperish look, and I filled my pock- ets with them. The squirrels had found them out before me. It is an agreeable surprise to find in the midst of a swamp so large and edible a fruit as an apple. Of late we have much cloudy weather without rain. Are not liable to showers, as in summer, but may have astorm. The Lentago berries appear to drop off before, or as soon as, they turn. There are few left on the bushes. Many that I bring home will turn in a single night. ‘The sassafras leaves are red. The huckleberry bushes begin to redden. The white actzea berries still hang on, or their red pedicels remain. My friend is he who can make a good guess at me, hit me on the wing.

Sophia has in her herbarium and has found in Concord these which I have not seen this summer: — Pogonia verticillata, Hubbard’s Second Wood. Big- elow says July. Trillium erythrocarpum, Bigelow says May and June. Uvularia perfoliata, Bigelow says May. P. M. — On river. The Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre is a late flower, and now more common and the spikes larger, quite handsome and conspicuous, and more like a prince’s-feather than any. Large woolly aphides are now clustered close together on the alder stems. Some of those I see are probably the sharp-shinned hawk. When was it I heard the upland plover? Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season. The soap- wort gentian the flower of the river-banks now. In love we impart, each to each, in subtlest immate- rial form of thought or atmosphere, the best of ourselves, such as commonly vanishes or evaporates in aspirations, and mutually enrich each other. The lover alone per- ceives and dwells in a certain human fragrance. To him humanity is not only a flower, but an aroma and a flavor also.

P. M.— Round by Clematis Brook. The forget-me-not still. I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow (Hubbard’s), more full and bnght than any flower. The maples are mostly darker, the very few boughs that are turned, and the tupelo, which is reddening. The ash is just beginning to turn. The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day. I find huckleberries on Conantum still sound and blackening the bushes. How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon than one would expect ! Some acorns and hickory nuts on the ground, but they have not begun to shell. Is it the nut of the Carya amara, with raised seams, but not bitter, that I perceive ? I suppose that is the Carya tomentosa, or mockernut hickory, with large rounded nuts on Lee’s land. The bitternuts (?), rubbed together, smell like varnish. The sarothra in bloom. The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red, and their stems are slanted up-stream. Almost all the yellow ones have disappeared. A blue- stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. The woodbine high on trees in the shade a delicate pink. I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day. I think they must be the senelles of the Canadians. Hamame- lis Virginiana out, before its leaves fall. A woodchuck out. The waxwork not opened. The “ feathery tails” of the clematis fruit conspicuous and interesting now. Yellow lily out (again ?) in the pond-holes. Passing a corn-field the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. Any of his acquaintances would. He was only a trifle more weather|-beaten] than when I saw him last. His back being toward me, I missed nothing, and I thought to myself if I were a crow I should not fear the balance of him, at any rate.’ In northern latitudes, where other edible fruits are scarce, they make an account of haws and bunch- berries. The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.

According to Emerson, Lonicera hirsuta, hairy honeysuckle, grows in Sudbury. Some hickories are yellow. Hazel bushes a brownish red. Most grapes are shrivelled. Pasture thistle still. The zizania ripe, shining black, cylindrical kernels, five eighths of an inch long. The fruit of the thorn trees on Lee’s Hill is large, globular, and gray-dotted, but I cannot identify it certainly.

Polygonum dumetorum, climbing false-buck- wheat, still; also dodder. The fall dandelions are a prevailing flower on low turfy grounds, especially near the river. Ranunculus reptans still. The small galium (trifidum). A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected. The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. You can now easily detect them at a distance; every one in the swamps you overlook is revealed. The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red. Found the Bidens Beckii (?) September Ist, and the fringed gentian November 7th, last year. | 1 (Walden, p. 24; Riv. 37.]

Dreamed of purity last night. The thoughts seemed not to originate with me, but I was invested, my thought was tinged, by another’s thought. It was not I that originated, but I that entertained the thought. The river is getting to be too cold for bathing. There are comparatively few weeds left in it. It is not in vain, perhaps, that every winter the for- est is brought to our doors, shaggy with lichens. Even in so humble a shape as a wood-pile, it contains ser- mons for us. P. M.— To Ministerial Swamp. The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow, —a little dense web of cotton spun over it, — entangled in it, — as if to restrain it from rising higher. The increasing scarlet and yellow tints around the meadows and river remind me of the opening of a vast flower-bud; they are the petals of its corolla, which is of the width of the valleys. It is the flower of autumn, whose expanding bud just begins to blush. As yet, however, in the forest there are very few changes of foliage. The Polygonum articulatum, giving a rosy tinge to Jenny’s Desert and elsewhere, is very interesting now, with its slender dense racemes of rose-tinted flowers, apparently without leaves, rising cleanly out of the sand. It looks warm and brave; a foot or more high, and mingled with deciduous blue-curls. It is much divided, into many spreading slender-racemed branches, with inconspicuous linear leaves, reminding me, both by its form and its color, of a peach orchard in blossom, especially when the sunlight falls on it. Minute rose- tinted flowers that brave the frosts and advance the summer into fall, warming with their color sandy hill- sides and deserts, like the glow of evening reflected on the sand. Apparently all flower and no leaf. A warm blush on the sands, after frosty nights have come. Perhaps it may be called the ‘“‘evening red.” Rising, apparently, with clean bare stems from the sand, it spreads out into this graceful head of slender rosy racemes, wisp-like. This little desert of less than [an] acre blushes with it. I see now ripe, large (three-inch), very dark choco- late(?)-colored puffballs. Are then my five-fingers pufiballs ? The tree fern is in fruit now, with its deli- cate, tendril-like fruit climbing three or four feet over the asters, goldenrods, etc., on the edge of the swamp. The large ferns are yellow or brown now. Larks, like robins, fly in flocks. Dogsbane leaves a clear yellow. Succory in bloom at the Tommy Wheeler house. It bears the frost well, though we have not had much. Set out for use. The Gnaphalium plantaginifolium leaves, green above, downy beneath.