No More Learning

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The sap is now, and even far into November, frequently flowing fast in
these trees, as in maples in the spring; and apparently their bright
tints, now that most other oaks are withered, are connected with this
phenomenon. They are full of life. It has a pleasantly astringent,
acorn-like taste, this strong oak wine, as I find on tapping them with
my knife.

Looking across this woodland valley, a quarter of a mile wide, how
rich those scarlet oaks embosomed in pines, their bright red branches
intimately intermingled with them! They have their full effect there.
The pine boughs are the green calyx to their red petals. Or, as we go
along a road in the woods, the sun striking endwise through it, and
lighting up the red tents of the oaks, which on each side are mingled
with the liquid green of the pines, makes a very gorgeous scene.
Indeed, without the evergreens for contrast, the autumnal tints would
lose much of their effect.

The scarlet oak asks a clear sky and the brightness of late October
days. These bring out its colors. If the sun goes into a cloud they
become comparatively indistinct. As I sit on a cliff in the southwest
part of our town, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in
Lincoln, south and east of me, are lit up by its more level rays; and
in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, there is
brought out a more brilliant redness than I had believed was in them.
Every tree of this species which is visible in those directions, even
to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red. Some great ones lift
their red backs high above the woods, in the next town, like huge
roses with a myriad of fine petals; and some more slender ones, in a
small grove of white pines on Pine Hill in the east, on the very verge
of the horizon, alternating with the pines on the edge of the grove,
and shouldering them with their red coats, look like soldiers in red
amid hunters in green. This time it is Lincoln green, too.
Till the
sun got low, I did not believe that there were so many redcoats in the
forest army. Theirs is an intense, burning red, which would lose some
of its strength, methinks, with every step you might take toward them;
for the shade that lurks amid their foliage does not report itself at
this distance, and they are unanimously red. The focus of their
reflected color is in the atmosphere far on this side. Every such tree
becomes a nucleus of red, as it were, where, with the declining sun,
that color grows and glows. It is partly borrowed fire, gathering
strength from the sun on its way to your eye. It has only some
comparatively dull red leaves for a rallying-point, or kindling-stuff,
to start it, and it becomes an intense scarlet or red mist, or fire,
which finds fuel for itself in the very atmosphere. So vivacious is
redness. The very rails reflect a rosy light at this hour and season.
You see a redder tree than exists.

If you wish to count the scarlet oaks, do it now. In a clear day stand
thus on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high, and
every one within range of your vision, excepting in the west, will be
revealed. You might live to the age of Methuselah and never find a
tithe of them, otherwise. Yet sometimes even in a dark day I have
thought them as bright as I ever saw them. Looking westward, their
colors are lost in a blaze of light; but in other directions the whole
forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating
with green, while the so-called "gardeners," walking here and there,
perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little
asters amid withered leaves.

These are _my_ China-asters, _my_ late garden-flowers. It costs me
nothing for a gardener.