To Flint's Pond Island.

DECEMBER 24

December 24.

P. M. — To Flint's Pond. 

A strong and very cold northwest wind. I think that the cold winds are oftenest not northwest, but northwest by west. 

There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week. 

I measure the blueberry bushes on Flint's Pond Island.The five stems are united at the ground, so as to make one round and solid trunk thirty-one inches in circumference, but probably they have grown together there, for they become separate at about six inches above. They may have sprung from different seeds of one berry. At three feet from the ground they measure eleven inches, eleven, eleven and a half, eight, and six and a half, or, on an average, nine and a half. 


I climbed up and found a comfortable seat with my feet four feet above the ground, and there was room for three or four more there, but unfortunately this was not the season for berries. 

There were several other clumps of large ones there. One clump close by the former contained twenty-three stems within a diameter of three feet, and their aver age diameter at three feet from the ground was about two inches. These had not been cut, because they stood on this small island which has little wood beside, and therefore had grown the larger. 

The two prevailing lichens on them were Parmelia caperata and saxatilis, extending quite around their trunks; also a little of a parmelia more glaucous than the last one, and a little green usnea and a little ramalina.

This island appears to be a mere stony ridge three or four feet high, with a very low wet shore on each side, even as if the water and ice had shoved it up, as at the other end of the pond. 

I saw the tracks of a partridge more than half an inch deep in the ice, extending from this island to the shore, she having walked there in the slosh. They were quite perfect and reminded me of bird-tracks in stone. She may have gone there to bud on these blueberry trees. I saw where she spent the night at the bottom of that largest clump, in the snow.

This blueberry grove must be well known to the partridges; no doubt they distinguish their tops from afar.  

Perhaps yet larger ones were seen here before we came to cut off the trees.

Judging from those whose rings I have counted, the largest of those stems must be about sixty years old. The stems rise up in a winding and zigzag manner, one sometimes resting in the forks of its neighbor. There were many more clumps of large ones there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 24, 1859

There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week. See December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. When I push aside the snow with my feet, the ice appears quite black by contrast.”); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night! “)


I measure the blueberry bushes on Flint's Pond Island. See December 22, 1859 ("On what I will call Sassafras Island, in this pond, I notice the largest and handsomest high blueberry at the ground into four stems, all very large and the largest three inches in diameter (one way) at three feet high, and at the ground, where they seem to form one trunk (at least grown together), nine inches in diameter. ")