By the sixth of October the leaves generally begin to fall, in
successive showers, after frost or rain; but the principal
leaf-harvest, the acme of the _Fall_, is commonly about the sixteenth.
Some morning at that date there is perhaps a harder frost than we have
seen, and ice formed under the pump, and now, when the morning wind
rises, the leaves come down in denser showers than ever. They suddenly
form thick beds or carpets on the ground, in this gentle air, or even
without wind, just the size and form of the tree above. Some trees, as
small Hickories, appear to have dropped their leaves instantaneously,
as a soldier grounds arms at a signal; and those of the Hickory, being
bright yellow still, though withered, reflect a blaze of light from the
ground where they lie. Down they have come on all sides, at the first
earnest touch of autumn’s wand, making a sound like rain.
Or else it is after moist and rainy weather that we notice how great a
fall of leaves there has been in the night, though it may not yet be
the touch that loosens the Rock-Maple leaf. The streets are thickly
strewn with the trophies, and fallen Elm-leaves make a dark brown
pavement under our feet. After some remarkably warm Indian-summer day
or days, I perceive that it is the unusual heat which, more than
anything, causes the leaves to fall, there having been, perhaps, no
frost nor rain for some time. The intense heat suddenly ripens and
wilts them, just as it softens and ripens peaches and other fruits, and
causes them to drop.
The leaves of late Red Maples, still bright, strew the earth, often
crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, like some wild apples,—though they
preserve these bright colors on the ground but a day or two, especially
if it rains. On causeways I go by trees here and there all bare and
smoke-like, having lost their brilliant clothing; but there it lies,
nearly as bright as ever, on the ground on one side, and making nearly
as regular a figure as lately on the tree, I would rather say that I
first observe the trees thus flat on the ground like a permanent
colored shadow, and they suggest to look for the boughs that bore them.
A queen might be proud to walk where these gallant trees have spread
their bright cloaks in the mud. I see wagons roll over them as a shadow
or a reflection, and the drivers heed them just as little as they did
their shadows before.
Birds’-nests, in the Huckleberry and other shrubs, and in trees, are
already being filled with the withered leaves. So many have fallen in
the woods, that a squirrel cannot run after a falling nut without being
heard. Boys are raking them in the streets, if only for the pleasure of
dealing with such clean crisp substances. Some sweep the paths
scrupulously neat, and then stand to see the next breath strew them
with new trophies. The swamp-floor is thickly covered, and the
_Lycopodium lucidulum_ looks suddenly greener amid them. In dense woods
they half-cover pools that are three or four rods long. The other day I
could hardly find a well-known spring, and even suspected that it had
dried up, for it was completely concealed by freshly fallen leaves; and
when I swept them aside and revealed it, it was like striking the
earth, with Aaron’s rod, for a new spring. Wet grounds about the edges
of swamps look dry with them. At one swamp, where I was surveying,
thinking to step on a leafy shore from a rail, I got into the water
more than a foot deep. When I go to the river the day after the
principal fall of leaves, the sixteenth, I find my boat all covered,
bottom and seats, with the leaves of the Golden Willow under which it
is moored, and I set sail with a cargo of them rustling under my feet.
If I empty it, it will be full again to-morrow. I do not regard them as
litter, to be swept out, but accept them as suitable straw or matting
for the bottom of my carriage. When I turn up into the mouth of the
Assabet, which is wooded, large fleets of leaves are floating on its
surface, as it were getting out to sea, with room to tack; but next the
shore, a little farther up, they are thicker than foam, quite
concealing the water for a rod in width, under and amid the Alders,
Button-Bushes, and Maples, still perfectly light and dry, with fibre
unrelaxed; and at a rocky bend where they are met and stopped by the
morning wind, they sometimes form a broad and dense crescent quite
across the river. When I turn my prow that way, and the wave which it
makes strikes them, list what a pleasant rustling from these dry
substances grating on one another! Often it is their undulation only
which reveals the water beneath them. Also every motion of the
wood-turtle on the shore is betrayed by their rustling there. Or even
in mid-channel, when the wind rises, I hear them blown with a rustling
sound. Higher up they are slowly moving round and round in some great
eddy which the river makes, as that at the “Leaning Hemlocks,” where
the water is deep, and the current is wearing into the bank.
Perchance, in the afternoon of such a day, when the water is perfectly
calm and full of reflections, I paddle gently down the main stream,
and, turning up the Assabet, reach a quiet cove, where I unexpectedly
find myself surrounded by myriads of leaves, like fellow-voyagers,
which seem to have the same purpose, or want of purpose, with myself.
See this great fleet of scattered leaf-boats which we paddle amid, in
this smooth river-bay, each one curled up on every side by the sun’s
skill, each nerve a stiff spruce-knee,—like boats of hide, and of all
patterns, Charon’s boat probably among the rest, and some with lofty
prows and poops, like the stately vessels of the ancients, scarcely
moving in the sluggish current,—like the great fleets, the dense
Chinese cities of boats, with which you mingle on entering some great
mart, some New York or Canton, which we are all steadily approaching
together. How gently each has been deposited on the water! No violence
has been used towards them yet, though, perchance, palpitating hearts
were present at the launching. And painted ducks, too, the splendid
wood-duck among the rest, often come to sail and float amid the painted
leaves,—barks of a nobler model still!
What wholesome herb-drinks are to be had in the swamps now! What strong
medicinal, but rich, scents from the decaying leaves! The rain falling
on the freshly dried herbs and leaves, and filling the pools and
ditches into which they have dropped thus clean and rigid, will soon
convert them into tea,—green, black, brown, and yellow teas, of all
degrees of strength, enough to set all Nature a gossiping. Whether we
drink them or not, as yet, before their strength is drawn, these
leaves, dried on great Nature’s coppers, are of such various pure and
delicate tints as might make the fame of Oriental teas.
How they are mixed up, of all species, Oak and Maple and Chestnut and
Birch! But Nature is not cluttered with them; she is a perfect
husbandman; she stores them all. Consider what a vast crop is thus
annually shed on the earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is
the great harvest of the year. The trees are now repaying the earth
with interest what they have taken from it. They are discounting. They
are about to add a leaf’s thickness to the depth of the soil. This is
the beautiful way in which Nature gets her muck, while I chaffer with
this man and that, who talks to me about sulphur and the cost of
carting. We are all the richer for their decay. I am more interested in
this crop than in the English grass alone or in the corn. It prepares
the virgin mould for future cornfields and forests, on which the earth
fattens. It keeps our homestead in good heart.
For beautiful variety no crop can be compared with this. Here is not
merely the plain yellow of the grains, but nearly all the colors that
we know, the brightest blue not excepted: the early blushing Maple, the
Poison-Sumach blazing its sins as scarlet, the mulberry Ash, the rich
chrome-yellow of the Poplars, the brilliant red Huckleberry, with which
the hills’ backs are painted, like those of sheep. The frost touches
them, and, with the slightest breath of returning day or jarring of
earth’s axle, see in what showers they come floating down! The ground
is all party-colored with them. But they still live in the soil, whose
fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from
it. They stoop to rise, to mount higher in coming years, by subtle
chemistry, climbing by the sap in the trees, and the sapling’s first
fruits thus shed, transmuted at last, may adorn its crown, when, in
after-years, it has become the monarch of the forest.
It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and
rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently
lay themselves down and turn to mould!—painted of a thousand hues, and
fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last
resting-place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they
go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot,
ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,—some
choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and
meeting them half-way. How many flutterings before they rest quietly in
their graves! They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return
to dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot
of the tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind,
as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if
the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in
immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,—with such an
Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair
and nails.
When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk
in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no
lying nor vain epitaphs. What though you own no lot at Mount Auburn?
Your lot is surely cast somewhere in this vast cemetery, which has been
consecrated from of old. You need attend no auction to secure a place.
There is room enough here. The Loose-strife shall bloom and the
Huckleberry-bird sing over your bones. The woodman and hunter shall be
your sextons, and the children shall tread upon the borders as much as
they will. Let us walk in the cemetery of the leaves,—this is your true
Greenwood Cemetery.