in Thoreau’s Journal:

Now it is true autumn—all things are crisp & ripe.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute. It is the expression of an idea; growth according to a law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired, appropriated by spirit. If I take up a handful of earth, however separately interesting the particles may be, their relation to one another appears to be that of mere juxtaposition generally. I might have thrown them together thus. But the humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind. There is suggested something superior to any particle of matter, in the idea or mind which uses and arranges the particles.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The red maples are now red & also yellow & reddening. The white maples are green & silvery also yellowing and blushing— The birch is yellow —the black willow brown. The elms sere brown & thin —the bass bare—the button bush which was so late is already mostly bare except the lower part protected — The swamp wht oak is green with a brownish tinge. The Wht ash turned mulberry The white maples toward Ball’s hill have a burnt white appearance— The white oak a salmon color & also red— Is that scarlet oak rosed?— Huckleberries & blackberries are red.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The autumnal tints about the pond are now perfect—nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the shore & extend their red banners over the water—why should so many be yellow?  I see the browner yellow of the chestnuts on Pine Hill—  The maples & hickories are a clearer yellow.  Some white oaks are red—  The shrub oaks are bloody enough for a ground—  The red & black oaks are yet green.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is a great difference between this season and a month ago — warm as this happens to be — as between one period of your life and another. A little frost is at the bottom of it.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Everything — all fruits and leaves, the reddish-silvery feather grass in clumps, even the surfaces of stone and stubble — are all ripe in this air. Yes, the hue of maturity has come even to that fine silver-topped feathery grass, two or three feet high, in clumps on dry places. I am riper for thought, too.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is well to find your employment and amusement in simple and homely things. These wear best and yield most.

I think I would rather watch the motions of these cows in their pasture for a day, which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing, – watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully, – than wander to Europe or Asia and watch other motions there; for it is only ourselves that we report in either case, and perchance we shall report a more restless and worthless self in the latter case than in the first.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Now the year itself begins to be ripe….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The maples about Walden are quite handsome now. Standing on the railroad, I look across the pond to Pine Hill, where the outside trees and the shrubs scattered generally through the wood glow through the green, yellow, and scarlet, like fires just kindled at the base of the trees, – a general conflagration just fairly under way, soon to envelop every tree. The hillside forest is all aglow along its edge and in all its cracks and fissures, and soon the flames will leap upward to the tops of the tallest trees. About the pond I see maples of all their tints, and black birches (on the southwest side) clear pale yellow; and on the peak young chestnut clumps and walnuts are considerably yellowed.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How much more beautiful the lakes now like Fair Haven surrounded by the autumn tinted woods & hills.— as in an ornamented frame. Some maples in sprout lands are of a delicate pure clear unspotted red inclining to crimson—surpassing most flowers— I would fain grasp at the whole tree & carry it home for a nose-gay.

Photo: September 29, 2020

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The young black birches about Walden, next the south shore, are now commonly clear pale-yellow, very distinct at distance, like bright-yellow white birches, so slender amid the dense growth of oaks and evergreens on the steep shores. The black birches and red maples are the conspicuous trees changed about the pond. Not yet the oaks.