A good time to walk in swamps

December 29

Down railroad to Andromeda Ponds. 

I occasionally see a small snowflake in the air against the woods. It is quite cold, and a serious storm seems to be beginning. 

Just before reaching the Cut I see a shrike flying low beneath the level of the railroad, which rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm within four or five rods. All ash or bluish-slate above down to middle of wings; dirty-white breast, and a broad black mark through eyes on side of head; primaries(?) black, and some white appears when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked bill (upper mandible).

It makes no sound, but flits to the top of an oak further off. Probably a male. 

Am surprised to find eight or ten acres of Walden still open, notwithstanding the cold of the 26th, 27th, and 28th and of to-day. It must be owing to the wind partly. If quite cold, it will probably freeze to-night. [Not quite. Say the night of the 30th.]

I find in the andromeda bushes in the Andromeda Ponds a great many nests apparently of the red-wing(?) suspended after their fashion amid the twigs of the andromeda, each now filled with ice. I count twenty-one within fifteen rods of a centre, and have no doubt there are a hundred in that large swamp, for I only looked about the edge part way. 

It is remarkable that I do not remember to have seen flocks of these birds there. It is an admirable place for them, these swamps are so impassable and the andromeda so dense. It would seem that they steal away to breed here, are not noisy here as along the river. 

The nests are suspended very securely between eight or ten andromeda stems, about half way up them; made of more or less coarse grass or sedge without, then about half an inch of dense and fine, now frozen sphagnum, then fine wild grass or sedge very regularly, and sometimes another layer of sphagnum and of fine grass above these, the whole an inch thick, the bottom commonly rounded. The outside grasses are well twisted about whatever andromeda stems stand at or near the river. I saw the traces of mice in some of them.

I never knew, or rather do not remember, the crust so strong and hard as it is now and has been for three days. You can skate over it as on ice in any direction. I see the tracks of skaters on all the roads, and they seem hardly to prefer the ice. 

Above Abiel Wheeler’s, on the back road, the crust is not broken yet, though many sleds and sleighs have passed. The tracks of the skaters are as conspicuous as any there. But the snow is but trim or three inches deep. 

Jonas Potter tells me that he has known the crust on snow two feet deep to be as strong as this, so that he could drive his sled anywhere over the walls; so that he cut off the trees in Jenny’s lot three feet from the ground, and cut again after the snow was melted. 

When two men, Billings and Prichard, were dividing the stock of my father and Hurd, the former acting for Father, P. was rather tight for Hurd. They came to a cracked bowl, at which P. hesitated and asked, “Well, what shall we do with this?” B. took it in haste and broke it, and, presenting him one piece, said, “There, that is your half and this is ours.” 

A good time to walk in swamps, there being ice but no snow to speak of, — all crust. It is a good walk along the edge of the river, the wild side, amid the button-bushes and willows. 

The eupatorium stalks still stand there, with their brown hemispheres of little twigs, orreries. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1855

A  shrike . . . rises and alights on the topmost twig of an elm. See  December 30, 1859 ("I see a shrike perched on the tip-top of the topmost upright twig of an English cherry tree . . . square on the topmost bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his tail from time to time. I have noticed this habit of the bird before. . . . It flew toward a young elm, whose higher twigs were much more slender. . . to my surprise, he alighted without any trouble upon the very top of one of the highest of all, and looked around as before. ") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Northern Shrike

Eight or ten acres of Walden still open. See December 30, 1853 ("[Walden] not yet frozen entirely over; about six acres open, the wind blew so hard last night.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  First Ice

A great many nests apparently of the red-wing suspended after their fashion . . . each now filled with ice. See May 16, 1854 ("Red-wing blackbirds' nests which are now being built,. . . are generally hung between two twigs."); May 20, 1853 ("Probably a red-wing blackbird's nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes.")  See also  December 24, 1851 ("Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow."); December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”)

I never knew . . . the crust so strong and hard as it is now and has been for three days. You can skate over it as on ice in any direction. See February 19, 1855 ("Rufus Hosmer says that in the year 1820 there was so smooth and strong an icy crust on a very deep snow that you could skate everywhere over the fields.")

A good time to walk in swamps, there being ice but no snow to speak of, — all crust. See December 6, 1856 ("I can walk through the spruce swamp now dry-shod, amid the water andromeda and Kalmia glauca."); December 22, 1850 ("In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds . . . I see more tracks in the swamps than elsewhere."); February 13, 1859 ("Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in summer."); February 19, 1854 ("I incline to walk now in swamps and on the river and ponds, where I cannot walk in summer.") See also December 13, 1856 ("My first true winter walk is perhaps that which I take on the river, or where I cannot go in the summer. It is the walk peculiar to winter, and now first I take it.");  August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go. There is, no doubt, a particular season of the year when each place may be visited with most profit and pleasure, and it may be worth the while to consider what that season is in each case.")

A good time to walk 

in swamps there being ice but 

no snow to speak of.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A good time to walk in swamps

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2025

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