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Nature Seeker

Jan. 10. Winter cheer among lively catkins, a charismatic redhead & spectral purity - Up Assabet

Updated: Jan 15

Jan. 10., 1859. P.M. Up Assabet....

Cold weather at last; 8 this forenoon. This is much the coldest afternoon to bear as yet, but, cold as it is, four or five below at 3 P.M., I see, as I go round the Island [Egg Rock], much vapor blowing from a bare space in the river just below, twenty rods off. I see, in the Island wood, where squirrels have dug up acorns in the snow, and frequently where they have eaten them on the trees and dropped the shells about on the snow.

Hemlock is still falling on the snow, like the pitch pine. The swamp white oaks apparently have fewer leaves — are less likely to have any leaves, even the small ones — than any oaks except the [dwarf] chinquapin [oak] me-thinks. Here is a whole wood of them above Pinxter Swamp, which you may call bare. ....

The middle of the river where narrow, as south side Willow Island, is lifted up into a ridge considerably higher than on the sides and cracked broadly.

The alder is one of the prettiest of trees and shrubs in the winter, it is evidently so full of life, with its conspicuous pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides. It seems to dread the winter less than other plants. It has a certain heyday and cheery look, and less stiff than most, with more of the flexible grace of summer. With those dangling clusters of red catkins which it switches in the face of winter, it brags for all vegetation. It is not daunted by the cold, but hangs gracefully still over the frozen stream.

….

I come across to the road south of the hill to see the pink on the snow-clad hill at sunset.

About half an hour before sunset this intensely clear cold evening (thermometer at five -6), ... I walk back and forth in the road waiting to see the pink. .... Standing thus on one side of the hill, I begin to see a pink light reflected from the snow there about fifteen minutes before the sun sets. This gradually deepens to purple and violet in some places, and the pink is very distinct, especially when, after looking at the simply white snow on other sides, you turn your eyes to the hill. .... This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.

-H.D.T.

A brilliant orange glow of the setting sun on the top of the upper slope of the Concord Land Conservation Trust's Shaw land, on Nashawtuct Hill.

Jan. 10, 2021.

This sunny afternoon, in the low forties, many people are out walking on the Old Reformatory Trail, along the Assabet. I start from Egg Rock, referred to by Thoreau as the Island. With virtually no snow at all on the ground, it is hard to find seed or bark castings from the Hemlocks. I do find though a pile of acorn shells at the base of a tree - apparent cast offs from squirrels snacking in branches above.

I stop within a thick stand of tall, mature hemlocks, which undoubtedly dates back to the time of the Trancendendalists, who wrote adoringly referred to certain Leaning Hemlocks, which grew among these trees at a tilt over the Assabet from its steep banks in search of light and embattled against the shifting, eroding soils. Some hemlocks still lean in today, but to a lesser degree, and I see one tree which lies collapsed, having lost the fight to stay upright, in the river.

I join multiple people who have gathered to watch a charismatic pileated woodpecker thump away into the hemlock wood, large chunks flying off the trunk as it works. I see many different vertically set oblong holes it has made; it moves back to an earlier excavated recess and drops his entire face into the trunk in search food.

While Thoreau walked or skated up a frozen Assabet, I follow its riverbank off-trail looking for alder, which completely elude me. (I find a patch of alders, adorned with cones and red toned catkins, the following day though within Ice Fort Cove of Walden Pond, and include a photo below).

I notice in Pinxter Swamp that the oaks with hanging leaves, on smaller trees and the lower portion of larger trees, are largely the white oak, as well as some pin oak. I find mixed among these oaks, swamp white oak and red oak leaves on the ground. The reaching branches of these large trees here are fully naked. The shallower, more placid water in the swamp has frozen, displaying swirled, wavy patterns. In contrast to Thoreau's day, Willow Island hosts large maples and is completely unbounded by ice. In our different climate today, I cannot imagine walking or skating the entire length of any of our rivers, but in Thoreau's journal entries it was commonplace.

I turn around at the location of the former railroad bridge to Barrett’s Mill farm land. Is is here at the base of a tree that I find what look like small bits of coal that have surfaced from underground. Remnants from the coal bins of the train engines of yore? The repeated hooo, ha, hoo, hoo, hoo of a Great Horned Owl accompanied me as I walk back along the Reformatory Branch Trail.

On my way home, standing on the road south of Nashawtuct Hill, as Thoreau did, I see a brilliant orange glow of the setting sun on the top of the upper slope of the Concord Land Conservation Trust's Shaw land. The brilliance of the sun on the hill takes me aback, not only in its own right because of its sheer beauty, but because of its remarkable similarity to the striking nature of the sun against the southern side of this hill on Thoreau's day. Thoreau describes the light as pink, but that was against white snow. Perhaps the peach-colored glow today is caused by the blending of similar pink light against the yellowish-tan dead grass of this hill?

Can there be some similarity, given the right conditions, to the winter sunset on this calendar day to make the sunsets against this slope a special annual event? My imagination tells me yes, and from what I read there is some science to back it up too. Winter sunsets, due to the angle of the earth in relation to the sun and because of lower amounts of moisture in the air are apparently richer in color and brilliance and last longer. For Thoreau this "spectrally pure" effect was even more enhanced by the contrast of the colored light against the white snow, and most likely by the very cold conditions on his day. (Read more here.)


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