Thoreau write in his journal:
Another cloudy afternoon after a clear morning.
When I enter the woods I notice the drier crispier rustle of withered leaves on the oak trees,—a sharper susurrus . . .
As I return by the Well Meadow Field and then Wheeler’s large wood, the sun shines from over Fair Haven Hill into the wood, and I see that the sun, when low, will shine into a thick wood, which you had supposed always dark, as much as twenty rods, lighting it all up, making the gray, lichen-clad sterns of the trees all warm and bright with light, and a distinct black shadow behind each. As if every grove, however dense, had its turn. A higher truth, though only dimly hinted at, thrills us more than a lower expressed . . .