in Thoreau’s Journal:

I cannot easily dismiss the subject of the fallen leaves. How densely they conceal the water, for several feet in length, amid the alders and button bushes and maples along the shore of the river still light, tight, and dry boats, dense cities of boats…Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed upon the earth. This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year.

This annual decay and death, this dying by inches, before the whole tree at last lies down and turns to soil. As tees shed their leaves, so deer their horns, and men their hair or nails. The year’s great crop. I am more interested in it than in the English grass alone or in the corn. It prepares the virgin mould for future cornfields on which the earth fattens. They teach us how to die.