The Andromeda Ponds

January 24.

Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it, two feet or more high, as thick as a moss bed, springing out of a still denser bed of sphagnum beneath.

Above the general level rise in clumps here and there the panicled andromeda, with brown clustered fruit, and the high blueberry. But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole.

Dr. Harris spoke of this andromeda as a rare plant in Cambridge. There was one pond-hole where he had found it, but he believed they had destroyed it now getting out the mud. What can be expected of a town where this is a rare plant?

Here is Nature’s parlor; here you can talk with her in the lingua vernacula, if you can speak it,—if you have anything to say, —her little back sitting-room, her withdrawing, her keeping room.

I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges like mother-o’-pearl or the inside of a couch. It was quite conspicuous fifteen rods off, and the color of spring-cranberry juice. This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 24, 1855

Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. A dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it. See April 19 1852 ("That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. ."); January 10,1855("As I go toward the sun now at 4 P. M., the translucent leaves are lit up by it and appear of a soft red, more or less brown, like cathedral windows, but when I look back from the sun, the whole bed appears merely gray and brown or less reddish.”); November 24, 1857 ("Looking toward the sun, the andromeda in front of me is a very warm red brown and on either side of me, a pale silvery brown; looking from the sun, a uniform pale brown. . . .These andromeda swamps charmed me more than twenty years sgo, — I knew not why")

  Rose-color ice. See January 22, 1860 ("At the west or nesaea end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw, but now spoiled by the thaw and snow. The leaves of the water andromeda are evidently more appressed to the twigs, and showing the gray under sides, than in summer.")