January 10, 2025
To Beck Stow’s. The swamp is suddenly frozen up again, and they are carting home the mud which was dug out last fall, in great frozen masses.
The twigs of the Andromeda Polifolia, with its rich leaves turned to a mulberry-color above by the winter, with a bluish bloom and a delicate bluish white, as in summer, beneath, project above the ice, the tallest twigs recurved at top, with the leaves standing up on the upper side like teeth of a rake.
Then there is the Andromeda calyculata, its leaves appressed to the twigs, pale-brown beneath, reddish above, with minute whitish dots. 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.
The great buds of the swamp-pink, on the central twig, clustered together, are more or less imbrowned and reddened.
At European Cranberry Swamp, I see great quanities of the seeds of that low three-celled rush or sedge, about the edge of the pool on the ice, black and elliptical, looking like the droppings of mice, so thick in many places that by absorbing the sun’s heat they had melted an inch or more into the ice.
Cold and blustering as it is, the crows are flapping and sailing about and buffeting one another as usual.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1855
The Andromeda Polifolia, with its rich leaves turned to a mulberry-color above by the winter, with a bluish bloom and a delicate bluish white, as in summer, beneath. See July 14, 1853 (“Saw something blue, or glaucous, in Beck Stow's Swamp to-day; approached and discovered the Andromeda Polifolia, in the midst of the swamp at the north end, not long since out of bloom. This is another instance of a common experience. When I am shown from abroad, or hear of, or in any [way] become interested in, some plant or other thing, I am pretty sure to find it soon.“)
Beck Stow's. See January 10, 1856 ("I love to wade and flounder through the swamp now") See also July 17, 1852 ("Beck Stow's Swamp! What an incredible spot to think of in town or city! . . . deep and impenetrable, where the earth quakes for a rod around you at every step . . . and its verdurous border of woods imbowering it on every side") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at Beck Stow's Swamp
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. See April 17, 1852 ("Chancing to turn round, I was surprised to see that all this pond-hole also was filled with the same warm brownish-red-colored andromeda. The fact was I was opposite to the sun, but from every other position I saw only the sun reflected from the surface of the andromeda leaves, which gave the whole a grayish-brown hue tinged with red; but from this position alone I saw, as it were, through the leaves which the opposite sun lit up, giving to the whole this charming warm, what I call Indian, red color, — the mellowest, the ripest, red imbrowned color;. . . that warm, rich red tinge, surpassing cathedral windows”); April 19, 1852 ("These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Andromeda Phenomenon
The great buds of the swamp-pink. See January 31, 1854 ("I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplar, and the sweet- gale"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Swamp-pink
European Cranberry Swamp.[Gowing's Swamp] See August 30, 1856 ("To Vaccinium Oxycoccus Swamp . . . I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, which Emerson says is the common cranberry of the north of Europe.").")
Cold and blustering as it is, the crows are flapping and sailing about and buffeting one another as usual. See November 25, 1860 (“I see a very great collection of crows far and wide on the meadows, evidently gathered by this cold and blustering weather.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow
January 10. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 10
The andromeda –
translucent leaves lit up like
cathedral windows.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Translucent leaves lit up like cathedral windows
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
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550110
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We are up to the ridge again it is colder tonight perhaps 14° snow is slippery there are fox and coyote tracks on the way up and we don't stop at the view because of the cold and on the ridge in back we find a bobcat track that follows the trail along our own tracks up the ridge. For the first time this winter we walk on the ice on the pond and a new tree has fallen across the shortcut right above the driveway. Such a remarkable thing to be out in the cold in the woods with the bobcat this is the single thing to remember about today .
A fresh bobcat track
follows the trail up the ridge
along our old tracks.
Zphx20150110
