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.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The witch hazel here is in full blossom—on this magical hill-side-while its broad yellow leaves are falling—some bushes are completely bare of leaves, and leather-colored they strew the ground. It is an extremely interesting plant—October & November’s child—and yet reminds me of the very earliest spring- Its blossoms smell like the spring—like the willow catkins—by their color as well as fragrance they belong to the saffron dawn of the year.

— Suggesting amid all these signs of Autumn—falling leaves & frost—that the life of nature—by which she eternally flourishes, is untouched. It stands here in the shadow on the side of the hill while the sun-light from over the top of the hill lights up its topmost sprays & yellow blossoms. Its spray so jointed and angular is not to be mistaken for any other. I lie on my back with joy under its boughs. While its leaves fall—its blossoms spring. The autumn then is in deed a spring. All the year is a spring. I see two blackbirds high over head going south, but I am going north in my thought with these hazel blossoms

It is a faery-place. This is a part of the immortality of the soul. When I was thinking that it bloomed too late for bees or other insects to extract honey from its flowers—that perchance they contained no honey—I saw a bee upon it. How important then to the bees this late blossoming plant.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This evening I am obliged to sit with my door & window open—in a thin coat—which I have not done for 3 weeks at least.

A warm night like this at this season produces its effect on the village— The boys are heard at play in the street now at 9 ‘o’clock—in greater force & with more noise than usual. My neighbor has got out his flute— There is more fog than usual—the moon is full.

The tops of the woods in the horizon seen above the fog look exactly like long low black clouds—the fog being the color of the sky.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The river appears indefinitely wide—there is a mist rising from the water which increases the indefiniteness…

Where the shore is very low the actual & reflected trees appear to stand foot to foot—& it is but a line that separates them & the water & the sky almost flow into one another—& the shore seems to float.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is not now that profusion, and consequent confusion, of events which belongs to a summer walk. There are few flowers, birds, insects, or fruits now, and hence what does occur affects us as more is simple and significant, as the cawing of a crow or the scream of a jay. The latter seems to scream more fitly and with more freedom through the vacancies occasioned by fallen maple leaves.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

In the summer greenness is cheap, now it is a thing comparatively rare, and is the emblem of life to us.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Seen from Heywood’s Peak at Walden, the shore is now more beautifully painted. The most prominent trees are the red maples and the yellowish aspens. The pine fall or change has commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Generally speaking, it is only the lower edge of the woods that now shows the bright autumnal tints, while the superstructure is green, the birches, very young oaks and hickories, huckleberry bushes, blueberries, etc, that stand around the edges, though here and there some taller maple flames upward amid the masses of green, or some other riper and mellower tree.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

These days when the trees have put on their autumnal tints are the gala days of the year—when the very foliage of the trees is colored like a blossom—

It is a proper time for a yearly festival—an agricultural show.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The different characters of the trees appear at this season when their leaves so to speak are ripe than at any other—than in the winter for instance when they are little remarkable—& almost uniformly grey or brown or in the spring & summer when they are undistinguishably green. Now a red maple—an ash—a white birch—a populous grandidentata &c is distinguished almost as far as they are visible.

It is with leaves as with fruits & woods—& animals & men —when they are mature their different characters appear.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The intense brilliancy of the red-ripe maples scattered here and there in the midst of the green oaks and hickories on the hilly shore of Walden is quite charming. They are unexpectedly and incredibly brilliant, especially on the western shore and close to the water’s edge, where, alternating with yellow birches and poplars and green oaks, they remind me of a line of soldiers, redcoats and riflemen in green mixed together.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

P.M. To Great Fields via Gentian Lane. The gentian now generally in prime, on low, moist shady banks.

Its transcendent blue shows best in the shade and suggests coolness; contrasts there with the fresh green; a splendid blue, light in the shade, turning to purple with age. They are particularly abundant under the north side of the willow row in Merrick’s pasture. I count fifteen in a single cluster there, and afterward twenty in Gentian Lane near Flint’s Bridge, and there were other clusters below; bluer than the bluest sky, they lurk in the moist shady recesses of the banks.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

White birches have fairly begun to yellow and blackberry vines here and there in sunny places look like a streak of blood in the grass.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a warm and very pleasant afternoon. I walk along the river-side in Merrick’s pasture. Some single red maples are very splendid now; the whole tree bright scarlet against the cold green pines, while very few trees are changed, it is 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.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I watched the seeds of the milk-weed rising higher & higher till lost in the sky…. I brought home 2 of the pods which were already bursting open and amused myself from day to day with releasing the seeds & watching rise slowly into the heavens till they were lost to my eye.

No doubt the greater or less rapidity with which they rose would serve as a natural barometer to test the condition of the air.

In Thoreau’s Journal:

September 24, 1851:

The huckleberry bushes on Conantum are all turned red.

September 24, 1858:

A man must attend to nature closely for many years to know when, as well as where, to look for his objects, since he must always anticipate her a little….I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods….

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

So live that only the most beautiful wild-flowers will spring up where you have dwelt, —harebells, violets, and blue-eyed grass.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I am astonished to see how brown & sere the Groundsel or “fire-weed” on hill side by Heywood’s meadow—which has been touched by frost-already is—as if it had died long months ago or a fire had run through it. It is a very tender plant. Standing on Bear Hill in Lincoln— The black birches (I think they are) now yellow on the south side of Flints Pond on the hill side, look like flames.

The chestnut trees are brownish yellow—as well as green. It is a beautifully clear and bracing air with just enough coolness full of the memory of frosty mornings—through which all things are distinctly seen & fields look as smooth as velvet—

The fragrance of grapes is on the breeze & the red drooping barberries sparkle amid the leaves. From the Hill on the S side of the Pond—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.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

….the mullein still in bloom….

I see many tall clustered bluish asters by the brooks…

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….

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.