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

The sun concealed by haze.

August 25

August 25, 2017

I think I never saw the haze so thick as now, at 11 A.M., looking from my attic window. 

I cannot quite distinguish J. Hosmer's house, only the dark outline of the woods behind it. There appears to be, as it were, a thick fog over the Dennis plains. Between me and Nawshawtuct is a very blue haze like smoke. Indeed many refer all this to smoke. 

Opposite the bath place, the pools are nearly all dry, and many little pollywogs, an inch long, lie dead or dying together in the moist mud. Others are covered with the dry brown-paper conferva.  

The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster. 

Also the choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black. 

We still continue to have strong wind in the middle of the day. The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone.

This blue haze is not dissipated much by the night, but is seen still with the earliest light.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1854

I cannot quite distinguish J. Hosmer's house, only the dark outline of the woods behind it. See July 26, 1854 ("I am going over the hill through Ed. Hosmer's orchard, when I observe this light reflected from the shorn fields, contrasting affectingly with the dark smooth Assabet, reflecting the now dark shadows of the woods. The peculiarity of . . . the bordering woods [is] in a dog-day density of shade reflected darkly in the water."); August 6, 1854 ("As I look westward up the stream , the oak , etc. , on Ponkawtasset are of a very dark green, almost black, which, methinks, they have worn only since midsummer. Has this anything to do with the bluish mistiness of the air?"); August 20, 1854 ("There is so thick a bluish haze these dog-days that single trees . . . stand out distinctly a dark mass, almost black, as seen against the more distinct blue woods.") Compare April 30, 1852 ("Hosmer's house and cottage under its elms and on the summit of green smooth slopes looks like a terrestrial paradise, the abode of peace and domestic happiness. Far over the woods westward, a shining vane, glimmering in the sun.")

Many refer all this[blue haze] to smoke. See note to August 31, 1854 ("There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed.")

Opposite the bath place, the pools are nearly all dry , and many little pollywogs, an inch long, lie dead or dying See August 22, 1854 ("At the lower end of these meadows, between the river and the firm land, are a number of shallow muddy pools or pond-holes"); August 28, 1854 ("The meadow is drier than ever, and new pools are dried up."); June 15, 1852 ("This half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it."); ,June 21, 1859 ("that little pool near the Assabet, above our bath-place there") See aksi December 3, 1858 ("I have often seen pollywogs in small numbers in the winter, in spring-holes, etc., but never such crowding to air-holes in the ice."); December 11, 1858 ("I find at the Pout’s Nest, now quite frozen over, air-holes and all, twenty-two pollywogs frozen in and dead within a space of two and a half feet square"); December 21, 1857 ("They appear to keep in motion in such muddy pond-holes, where a spring wells up from the bottom till midwinter, if not all winter.”)

The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe. See August 25, 1852 (“One of the most noticeable wild fruits at present is the Viburnum nudum berries, their variegated cymes amid the green leaves in the swamps or low grounds, some whitish, some greenish, some red, some pink, some rose-purple and very beautiful”) See also August 23, 1858 (“Viburnum nudum berries, apparently but a day or two.”); August 28, 1852 ("The viburnums, dentatum and nudum, are in their prime. The sweet viburnum not yet purple, and the maple-leaved still yellowish. ");August 28, 1856 ("Viburnum nudum berries are beginning; I already see a few shrivelled purple ones amid the light green. "); August 31, 1856 ("The Viburnum nudum berries are now in prime, a handsome rose-purple. I brought home a bunch of fifty-three berries, all of this color, and the next morning thirty were turned dark purple. In this state they are soft and just edible, having somewhat of a cherry flavor, not a large stone." ); September 3, 1856 ("Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side.. . . Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity.")

The choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black. See August 12, 1858 ("I eat the blueberry, but I am also interested in the rich-looking glossy black choke-berries which nobody eats, but which bend down the bushes on every side,—sweetish berries with a dry, and so choking, taste. Some of the bushes are more than a dozen feet high."); August 21, 1854 ("Red choke-berries are dried black; ripe some time ago. "); August 26, 1860 ("I thread my way through the blueberry swamp in front of Martial Miles's. . . . And now a far greater show of choke-berries is here, rich to see."); August 28, 1856 ("The bushes are weighed down with choke-berries, which no creature appears to gather. This crop is as abundant as the huckleberries have been. They have a sweet and pleasant taste enough, but leave a mass of dry pulp in the mouth.")

The sun is shorn of his beams by the haze before 5 o'clock P.M., round and red, and is soon completely concealed, apparently by the haze alone. See June 5, 1854 ("The sun goes down red and shorn of his beams, a sign of hot weather,"); June 16, 1854 ("Once or twice the sun has gone down red, shorn of his beams"); August 22, 1854 ("The haze, accompanied by much wind, is so thick this forenoon that the sun is obscured as by a cloud. I see no rays of sunlight."); August 24, 1854 ("To-night, as for at least four or five nights past, and to some extent, I think, a great many times within a month, the sun goes down shorn of his beams, half an hour before sunset, round and red, high above the horizon.")

August 25. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 25

I never saw haze

so thick as now from my

attic window.

The sun round and red

shorn of his beams and concealed 

by the haze alone.

 Viburnum nudum 

berries various colors 

in the same cluster.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The sun concealed by haze.

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540825

Hadlock meadows have been on fire (spread from bogging) several weeks.

August 23.

I improve the dry weather to examine the middle of Gowing's Swamp. There is in the middle an open pool, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, nearly full of sphagnum and green froth on the surface (frog-spittle), and what other plants I could not see on account of the danger in standing on the quaking ground; then a dense border, a rod or more wide, of a peculiar rush, with clusters of seed-vessels, three together, now going to seed, a yellow green, forming an abrupt edge next the water, this on a dense bed of quaking sphagnum, in which I sink eighteen inches in water, upheld by its matted roots, where I fear to break through. On this the spatulate sundew abounds. This is marked by the paths of muskrats, which also extend through the green froth of the pool. 

Andromeda polifolia

Next comes, half a dozen rods wide, a dense bed of Andromeda calyculata, — the A. Polifolia mingled with it, — the rusty cotton- grass, cranberries, — the common and also V. Oxycoccus, — pitcher-plants, sedges, and a few young spruce and larch here and there, — all on sphagnum, which forms little hillocks about the stems of the andromeda. Then ferns, now yellowing, high blueberry bushes, etc., etc., etc., — or the bushy and main body of the swamp, under which the sphagnum is now dry and white.

I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus, of which Emerson says it is the "common cranberry of the north of Europe," cranberry of commerce there, found by "Oakes on Nantucket, in Pittsfield, and near Sherburne." It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges. 

Cross the Brooks or Hadlock meadows, which have been on fire (spread from bogging) several weeks. They present a singularly desolate appearance. Much of the time over shoes in ashes and cinders. Yellowish peat ashes in spots here and there. The peat beneath still burning, as far as dry, making holes sometimes two feet deep, they say. The surface strewn with cranberries burnt to a cinder. 

I seemed to feel a dry heat under feet, as if the ground were on fire, where it was not. It is so dry that I walk lengthwise in ditches perfectly dry, full of the proserpinaca, now beginning to go to seed, which usually stands in water. Its pectinate lower leaves all exposed. On the baked surface, covered with brown-paper conferva.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1854

The open pool. See May 31, 1857 ("That central meadow and pool in Gowing's Swamp is its very navel, omphalos, where the umbilical cord was cut that bound it to creation's womb. Methinks every swamp tends to have or suggests such an interior tender spot. The sphagnous crust that surrounds the pool is pliant and quaking, like the skin or muscles of the abdomen; you seem to be slumping into the very bowels of the swamp.")

Gowing's Swamp today:  historical survey - botanical inventory

I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum. See November 20, 1850 ("The farmer, in picking over many bushels of cranberries year after year, finds at length, or has forced upon his observation, a new species of that berry, and avails himself thereafter of his discovery for many years before the naturalist is aware of the fact"); August 5, 1857 ("To my surprise found on the dinner-table at Thatcher's the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. T. did not know it was anything unusual, but bought it at such a rate per bushel of Mr. Such-a-one, who brought it to market. ")

The Lesser Redpoll

March 5.

F. Brown showed me to-day some lesser redpolls which he shot yesterday. They turn out to be my falsely-called chestnut-frontleted bird of the winter. They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it has been the prevailing bird here this winter.

 Yesterday I got my grape cuttings. The day before went to the Corner Spring to look at the tufts of green grass. Got some of the very common leptogium (??). Is it one of the Collemaceæ? 

Was pleased with the sight of the yellow osiers of the golden willow, and the red of the cornel, now colors are so rare. 

Saw the green fine-threaded conferva in a ditch, commonly called frog-spittle. Brought it home in my pocket, and it expanded again in a tumbler. It appeared quite a fresh growth, with what looked like filmy air-bubbles, as big as large shot, in its midst.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1853

The lesser redpoll has been the prevailing bird here this winter. See . March 6, 1860 ("The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter"); December 11, 1855  (“There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lesser Redpoll

Saw the green fine-threaded conferva in a ditch. See January 29, 1858 ("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")