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Jan. 7. Evasive species: muskrat, bobcat & owl - To Ministerial Swamp

Updated: Jan 16

Jan. 7, 1854. Saturday. Thaw ended. Cold last night; rough walking; snow crusted. P. M. To Ministerial Swamp. The bare larch trees there, so slender and tall, where they grow close together, all beaded or studded with buds, or rather stubs, which look like the dry sterile blossoms. How much fuller, or denser and more flourishing, in winter is the white spruce than the white pine! ....

The snow is still very deep in the more open parts of the swamp, where it is light, being held up by the bushes; but in thick woods there is much less of it, beside that it has settled far more. There is also much more in sprout-lands than in woods. Is it that the ground not being frozen in the woods melts it so much faster, while in the swamp, even if the ground is equally warm, the snow, lying light, does not come in contact with it enough to melt it?

.... I see the muddy, dripping tracks of [a] muskrat or mink that has come out of a ditch on to the snow here in the swamp. Saw a fat pitch pine stump, whose sap, four inches thick, has long been gone, but the scales of the thick bark still form a circle level with the ground four inches from the (solid or fat) wood on every side. ....

I went to these woods partly to hear an owl, but did not; but, now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, hoorerhoo. Strange that we should hear this sound so often, loud and far, a voice which we call the owl, and yet so rarely see the bird. Oftenest at twilight. It has a singular prominence as a sound; is louder than the voice of a dear friend. Yet we see the friend perhaps daily and the owl but few times in our lives. It is a sound which the wood or the horizon makes. I see the [train] cars almost as often as I hear the whistle.

-H.D.T.



A frozen Ministerial Swamp in winter, with patches of snow and cattails, Concord, Massachusetts.

Jan. 7, 2021.

I journey through Ministerial Swamp today, located within Concord’s Old Rifle Range conservation land, first off-trail along the area’s northern edge, and rounding back to my starting place via the Connecting Trail and Target Trail. On this day, I seek relief and rejuvenation from yesterday's terrifying and sad events in Washington, DC.

Snow cover is very scant generally today compared to 1854, but I do notice the same pattern of greater snow coverage in the swamp clearings (and perhaps even sapling areas) than in the more thickly forested uplands, presumably due to the underlying ice of the swamp, creating a colder longer-standing foundation against the melt. To my delight, I find in multiple locations sets of five-toed footprints in the snow along the frozen waters’ edge — what appear to be muskrat or mink. At the base of large white pines, the ground is covered with a mats of pine needles and recently fallen cones. Although not a pitch pine stump, I find a beautiful decaying birch tree stump, worthy of photographing. As to conifers, Thoreau’s larch and white spruce trees evade me in these woods, so predominated by white pines. I do find, though, juxtaposed right next to the long bare trunks of two enormous white pines ,an eastern hemlock tree, providing sharp contrast with a thick ornamental greenery.

Last month, I read of a recent citing of a bobcat in this area, so rather than an owl, I hope to see signs (or even a glimpse). Even the remotest possibility of seeing these more reclusive, exotic species certainly adds intrigue mystery to our woods. Across a log over a channel of water, I find faded oval footprints of a creature of enough agility and balance to cross. Could it be?

In the trees behind our house for several weeks before the new year, we heard two Great-Horned Owls calling to each other throughout the night. Despite our efforts (my wife and son searching for them with flash lights in the dark), the owls have so far escaped our view.




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