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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
P. M. – To old mill-site behind Ponkawtasset. Poke berries in the sprout-land east of the red huckleberry still fresh and abundant, perhaps a little past prime. I never saw so many. The plants stand close together, and their drooping racemes three to five inches long, of black or purplish-black berries (ending in red and less [an indecipherable word]), almost crowd one another, hanging around the bright-purple, now for the most part bare, stems.
I hear some birds about, but see none feeding on the berries. I could soon gather bushels there. The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. A large cluster is two and a half inches long by two wide and rather flattish. One, which has ripened prematurely, the stalk being withered and drooping, resembles a very short thick ear of scarlet corn. This might well enough be called snake-corn. These singular vermilion-colored berries, about a hundred of them, surmount a purple bag on a peduncle six or eight inches long. It is one of the most remarkable and dazzling, if not the handsomest, fruits we have. These were by violet wood-sorrel wall. How many fruits are scarlet now! – barberries, prinos, etc. A flock of vireo-like, somewhat yellowish birds, very neat, white beneath and olive above, in garden.
A small red maple has grown, perchance, far away on some moist hillside, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faithfully discharged the duties of a maple there, all winter and summer, neglected none of its economies, added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady growth all summer, and is nearer heaven than it was in the spring, never having gone gadding abroad; and now, in this month of September, when men are turned travellers, hastening to the seaside, or the mountains, or the lakes — in this month of travelling — this modest maple, having ripened its seeds, still without budging an inch, travels on its reputation, runs up its scarlet flag on that hillside, to show that it has finished its summer’s work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. Thus that modest worth which no scrutiny could have detected when it was most industrious, is, by the very tint of its maturity, by its very blushes, revealed at last to the careless and distant observer. It rejoices in its existence; its reflections are unalloyed. It is the day of thanksgiving with it. At last, its labors for the year being fully consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple — Acer rubrum. In its hue is no regret nor pining. Its leaves have been asking their parent from time to time in a whisper, “When shall we redden?” It has faithfully husbanded its sap, and builded without babbling nearer and nearer to heaven. Long since it committed its seeds to the winds and has the satisfaction of knowing perhaps that a thousand little well-behaved maples are already established in business somewhere. It deserves well of Mapledom. It has afforded a shelter to the wandering bird. Its autumnal tint shows how it has spent its summer; it is the hue of its virtue.
Some single red maples are very splendid now––the whole tree bright scarlet––against the cold green pines––now when very few trees are changed a most remarkable object in the landscape. Seen a mile off. It is too fair to be believed––especially seen against the light–– Some are a reddish or else greenish yellow––others with red or yellow cheeks–– I suspect that the yellow maples had not scarlet blossoms.
I did not see but the seeds of milkweed would be borne many hundred miles––and those which were ripened in New England might plant themselves in Pennsylvania. Packed in a little oblong chest––armed with soft downy prickles & lined with a smooth silky lining––lie some hundred of pear shaped seeds or shaped like the weight of steel-yards––the plumb. Closely packed and filling the follicle one or 2 hundred seeds––which have derived their nutriment through a band of extremely fine silken threads attached by their extremities to the core. At length when the seeds are matured & cease to require nourishment form the plant––being weaned & the pod with dryness & frost bursting––the extremities of the silken threads detach them selves from the core & from being the conduits of nutriment to the seed become the buoyant balloon which like some spiders’ webs bears the seeds to new & distant fields. They merely serve to buoy up the full fed seed.–– far finer than the finest thread. Think of the great variety of balloons which are buoyed up by similar means. I am interested in the fate or success of every such venture which the autumn sends forth.
In Cohush Swamp the sumach leaves have turned a very deep red, but have not lost their fragrance. I notice wild apples growing luxuriantly in the midst of the swamp, rising red over the colored, painted leaves of the sumach, and reminding me that they were ripened and colored by the same influences, –some green, some yellow, some red, like the leaves.
It is a beautifully clear and bracing air with just enough coolness full of the memory of frosty morning––through which all things are distinctly seen & the fields look as smooth as velvet––
The fragrance of grapes is on the breeze & the red drooping barberries sparkle amid the leaves…
the forests have a singularly rounded & bowery look clothing the hills quite down to the water’s edge & leaving no shore; the Ponds are like drops of dew amid and partly covering the leaves. So the great globe is luxuriously crowded without margin.
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 a-glow.
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