in Thoreau’s Journal:

The autumnal tints have not been so bright as usual this year, but why it is hard to say. The summer has been peculiarly cool, as well as wet, and it may be that the leaves have been the more inclined to decay before coming to maturity. Also, apparently, many leaves are killed by the mere frosts before ripening, the locust for instance, —and the frost came early this year, —just as melons and squashes before they have turned yellow; i.e., the leaves fall while they are still green.

Photo: October 11, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

October 10, 1851 in Thoreau’s Journal:

How agreeable to the eye at this season the color of new fallen leaves….sere & crisp. When freshly fallen with their forms & their veins still distinct they have a certain life in them still….You make a great noise now walking in the woods on account of the dry leaves—especially chestnut & oak—& maples that cover the ground….

The witch hazel loves a hill side with or without wood or shrubs. It is always pleasant to come upon it unexpectedly, as you are threading the woods in such places.

Photo: October 10, 2018 on Dinsmore Pond Road, Sandwich, New Hampshire

October 9, 1853 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The leaves are falling…

Photo: October 9, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This warm day is a godsend to the wasps. I see them buzzing about the broken windows of deserted buildings, as Jenny Dugan’s, —the yellow-knotted. I smell the dry leaves like hay from the woods. Some elms are already bare. The basswood here is quite sere. The pines are still shedding their leaves. This brook by Jenny’s is always a pleasant sight and sound to me. In the spring I saw the sucker here. It is remarkable through what narrow and shallow brooks a sucker will be seen to dart, and a trout. I perceive that some white oaks are quitered. The black oaks are yellowish. I know not surely whether the brighter red and more divided leaf is that of the red or the scarlet oak. 

Photo: October 8, 2019 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

October 7, 1852 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Perhaps the autumnal tints are as bright & interesting now as they will be—now is the time to behold the maple swamps—one mass of red & yellow—all on fire as it were.   These and the blood red huckleberries are the most conspicuous—and then in the village the warm brownish yellow elms—& there and elsewhere the dark red ashes.  The green pines springing out of huckleberries on the hillsides look as if surrounded by red or vermillion paint….

Photo: October 7, 2008 at Dinsmore Pond, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

The revolution of the seasons is a great and steady flow…a graceful, peaceful motion,

like the swell on lakes and seas.

What is sacrificed to time is lost to eternity.

Photo: October 6, 2018 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

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.

Photo: October 5, 2018 at Cook Interval, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Now the year itself begins to be ripe….

October 4, 2009 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is somewhat cooler and more autumnal. A great many leaves have fallen and the trees begin to look thin. You incline to sit in a sunny and sheltered place. This season, the fall, which we have now entered on, commenced, I may say, as long ago as when the first frost was seen and felt in low ground in August. From that time, even, the year has been gradually winding up its accounts. Cold, methinks, has been the great agent which has checked the growth of plants, condensed their energies, and caused their fruits to ripen, in September especially.

Photo: October 3, 2022 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

October 2, 1852 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: October 2, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire

October 1, 1856 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Examined an Asclepias Cornuti pod, already opening. As they dry, the pods crack open by the seam along their convex or outer side, revealing the seeds with their silky parachutes, closely packed in an imbricated manner, already right side up, to the number in one instance of 134, as I counted, and again 270. As they lie, they resemble somewhat a round plump fish, with the silk ends exposed at the tail. Children call them fishes. The silk is divided once or twice by the raised partition of the spongy core around which they are arranged. At the top of some more open and drier, is already a little clump of loosened seeds and down two or three inches in diameter, held by the converging tips of the down, like meridians, and just ready to float away when the wind rises.

Photo: October 1, 2017 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, New Hampshire