A mild October-like day with a fresh calm blue watery sky—how the season has advanced—now the sunlight comes from lower down in the south and has a brighter more direct light on things—The intense quiet of Autumn is over the land—what causes this peculiar stagnation? —true there are insects singing (no frost yet this year) but somehow they only seem to accentuate the profound silence—the heavy rains and unusual warm of September has created different color scheme over the countryside—there are great quantities of fresh green in the fields, which makes a beautiful foil for the inevitable brownness of August killed grasses + wild carrot—Purple asters are for the same reason especially luxuriant, and there are few more beautiful sights than their rich mauve scattered thru fields of light brown, dried grass—more usual in color scheme but none-the-less beautiful are the asters growing with goldenrod—I stood looking at one such a grouping, and with the bright sunlight pouring around me from behind, I felt I could not look enough—
Charles E. Burchfield, September 30, 1931