Beck Stow’s Swamp in Winter

January 29. 

P. M. – To Great Meadows at Copan. 

It is considerably colder. 

I go through the northerly part of Beck Stow's, north of the new road. For a great distance it is an exceedingly dense thicket of blueberry bushes, and the shortest way is to bend down bushes eight feet high and tread on them. The small red and yellow buds, the maze of gray twigs, the green and red sphagnum, the conspicuous yellowish buds of the swamp-pink with the diverging valves of its seed-vessels, the dried choke-berries still common, these and the like are the attractions.

The cranberry rising red above the ice is seen to be allied to the water andromeda, but is yet redder. 

In the ditches on Holbrook's meadow near Copan, I see a Rana palustris swimming, and much conferva greening all the water. Even this green is exhilarating, like a spring in winter. I am affected by the sight even of a mass of conferva in a ditch. I find some radical potamogeton leaves six inches long under water, which look as if growing. 

Found some splendid fungi on old aspens used for a fence; quite firm; reddish-white above and bright vermilion beneath, or perhaps more scarlet, reflecting various shades as it is turned. It is remarkable that the upper side of this fungus, which must, as here, commonly be low on decaying wood, so that we look down on it, is not bright-colored nor handsome, and it was only when I had broken it off and turned it over that I was surprised by its brilliant color. This intense vermilion (?) face, which would be known to every boy in the town if it were turned upward, faces the earth and is discovered only by the curious naturalist. Its ear is turned down, listening to the honest praises of the earth. It is like a light-red velvet or damask. These silent and motionless fungi, with their ears turned ever downward toward the earth, revealing their bright colors perchance only to the prying naturalist who turns them upward, remind me of the “Hear-all” of the story.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 29, 1858

I go through the northerly part of Beck Stow’s. See January 10, 1856 (“I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now,”); January 10, 1855 (“To Beck Stow’s. The swamp is suddenly frozen up again.”)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 29

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 ©  2009-2023

A flock of snow buntings not yet very white.

November 29. 

P. M. — To Copan.

There is a white birch on Copan which has many of the common birch fungus of a very peculiar and remarkable form, not flat  but shaped like a bell or short horn,  as if composed of a more flowing material which  had settled downward like a drop. As C. said, they were shaped like icicles, especially those short and spreading ones about bridges.

Saw quite a flock of snow buntings not yet very white. They rose from the midst of a stubble-field unexpectedly. The moment they settled after wheeling around, they were perfectly concealed, though quite near, and I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 29, 1859

The common birch fungus of a very peculiar and remarkable form. See January 17, 1858 ("The common birch fungus, which is horizontal and turned downward, splits the bark as it pushes out very simply, thus”)

I could only hear their rippling note from the earth from time to time.  See November 7, 1858 ("Their soft rippling notes as they went off reminded me [of] the northeast snow-storms to which ere long they are to be an accompaniment."); January 2, 1854 ("A flock of snow buntings flew over the fields with a rippling whistle, accompanied sometimes by a tender peep and a ricochet motion."); January 6, 1856 ("While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings coming to alight amid the currant-tops in the yard. It is a sound almost as if made with their wings.”);  January 6, 1859 (“They made notes when they went,—sharp, rippling, like a vibrating spring.”); January 21, 1857 (“Beside their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter”). March 3, 1859 ("I heard a faint rippling note and, looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak.”) See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting