Jan. 4. 1853. To what I will call Yellow Birch Swamp, E. Hubbard's, in north part of town.
The landscape is white, not only from the ice on the ground and trees, but from the snow which fell yesterday, though it is not an inch deep. In respect to snow, the winter appears to be just beginning. I must call that swamp of E. Hubbard's west of the Hunt Pasture, Yellow Birch Swamp. There are more of those trees than anywhere else in town that I know. How pleasing to stand beside a new or rare tree! And few are so handsome as this. Singularly allied to the black birch in its sweet checkerberry scent and its form, and to the canoe birch in its peeling or fringed and tasselled bark. The top is brush-like as the black birch; the bark an exquisite fine or delicate gold-color, curled off partly from the trunk, with vertical clear or smooth spaces, as if a plane had been passed up the tree. The sight of these trees affects me more than California gold. I measured one five feet and two inches in circumference at six feet from the ground. .... How lustily it takes hold of the swampy soil, and braces itself! And here flows a dark cherry wood or wine colored brook over the iron red sands in the sombre swamp, swampy wine. .... Among the primitive trees. What sort of dryads haunt these? Blond nymphs.
-H.D.T.
Jan. 4, 2020.
Just before noon, on a bright day at 36 degrees, I leave the Punkatasset entrance to Estabrook Woods to find Yellow Birch Swamp. Bright light shines on a dusting of snow, which remains largely untrodden from last night’s snowfall. Passing a snow-covered Hutchins Pond, which overflows with water over the path, I turn up East Hubbard Trail through tall stands of white pines, and past the trail entrance to Hubbard’s Hill. Turning off-trail to the west, I find the wide semi-frozen swamp and my first yellow birch! With grizzly, old and peeling gold bark, the tree and its many nearby companions are easily distinguishable. I circle around the swamp, cutting through its northern side and find a great many more of the trees, the largest of which I measure at four feet four inches in circumference at 6 feet up. Deer tracks, scat and trails are clear. The wetland, with rich and soupy water, is home to skunk cabbage and moss covered rocks. I find the “grassy spot” labelled on my map in the middle of the swamp and near a soggy water inlet. One beautiful display on the south side of the swamp includes a yellow birch intertwined with a tree of another species. Quiet abounds here, except for gurgling water, ice-creaking trees and the occasional plane overhead; on this walk I encounter no other person.
It is not a blond nymph as described by Thoreau, but a grizzly, peeling and moss-covered ent in the form of a yellow birch that I encounter here. A tree shepherd, like Treebeard of Fanghorn Forest in Tolkien's Middle Earth, befriends me today. His speech is languid and drawn out, his movements creeky and clumsy. He asks why I visit here in such a hidden swamp, so infrequented by humans. Upon hearing of my Thoreau-quest, the ent takes a deep, prolonged breath and goes into a long, meandering and slowly-recited story about taking tea and cakes or imbibing wine with musty cheese many times with the poet-naturalist on visits. Occasionally wood nymphs partook. I should visit again, he adds, but next time with tasty offerings to share.
Comments