Twelve Moons of the Year. October 01.

Significant sentences from The Twelve Moons of the Year by Hal Borland, a chronology of the New England Seasons. October 01.

"October...crisp nights, mild days, and the whole satisfaction of ripeness and achievement." p. 270.

"October makes a man want to get up and go and see and hear and feel." p. 271.

"October is the glory and the magnificence of the year's late afternoon." p. 271.

"And often the sugar maple's leaves turn golden yellow, sun-yellow, so that even on a clouded day in October, one seems to walk in sunshine in a sugar maple grove." p. 272.

"Maple seeds go whirling away on single-bladed helicopters." p. 273.

"Now comes the Hunter's Moon, the full moon of October...." p. 274.

"Put away the hoe, close the garden gate and let it frost." p. 276.

"If technology, with its practical laws of efficiency, were in charge of everything we would have to dispense with the autumn color in our woodlands.... It isn't needed for the trees' health, growth or fruitfulness.... In technical terms, the color is waste, sheer excess and leftover...created...when the tiring tree seals off the sap circulation and no longer replenishes the chlorophyll in the leaves." p. 277.

"...penciled flight of departing geese scrawled against the sky." p. 280.

"But, like so many prophets, the woolly bears are equivocal; one says yes, another says no." p. 280.

"...the wild goose seems to typify the restless spirit of autumn." p. 281.

"...the garrulousness of geese.... In the air or on the water, it chatters and gabbles, gossips and confers."

"Geese...you hear the distant clamor...seems to echo from the whole sky. You look up, searching, and at last you see the penciled V, high against the blue, arrowing southward...like the distant yapping of small dogs. Coming in over a hilltop, a dark cloud of them, to circle once and then drop, long necks outstretched, wings cupped, feet outthrust, to land in a rush of spray." p. 281.

"...the look and smell and sound of the autumn woodland." p. 282.