quotes_leaves.htm

… by the deserted logging-roads toadstools of all colours sprout on the decayed stumps.
Wherever a green or blue rock lifts from the hillside
the needles have been packed and matted round
its base, till, when the sunshine catches them,
stone and setting together look no meaner than
turquoise in dead gold. The woods are full of
colour, belts and blotches of it, the colours of
the savage, red, yellow, and blue…

This is from “Leaves from a Winter Notebook” in From Tideway to Tideway in Letters of Travel (1892-1913).

The newly-married Kiplings have settled near Brattleboro in Vermont. Here Kipling is writing of the woods in the Autumn, before the deep snows of the New England Winter close in.