I occasionally hear a musquash plunge under the ice next the shore.
These winter days I occasionally hear the note of a goldfinch, or maybe a redpoll, unseen, passing high overhead.
When you think that your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open.
— Henry David Thoreau
Several weeks after torrential rains had caused significant flooding in this area, I took a walk at the lake (more from that walk here, here, and here). That the flooding had been extensive is uncontested. In fact, a week later the floodplain was still a lake unto itself, and that provided an interesting canvas for freezing temperatures.
But during my walk before the weather turned cold, the results of the flooding lay everywhere. Most of it was natural debris, such as twigs and sticks and leaves. Occasional tidbits of litter also could be found, yet the flood’s most apparent traces were pieces and parts of local flora.
My walk took me close to the pier in Sunset Bay, and I spied a large number of ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis) standing upon it in the morning light. They were preening and gabbing, and then gabbing and preening. I made my way toward them to see if I could get a photo or two.
From that vantage, I could also see double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) further out in the water and a few American coots (Fulica americana) bobbing along under and beside the pier. Something else caught my attention, too. Behind the brush and tucked away on top of a large pile of flood-related debris that had been washed ashore, I spied a dab of white in the lower-left corner of the frame, something too large to be a bit of flotsam. Besides, it was moving.
I ventured further out on the pier for a better look. What I discovered was a beautiful white duck. Like the gulls, it had nestled down in a comfy spot to preen and enjoy some early sunshine… you know, something to take the chill out of the morning air.
This appears to be the same species of duck I’ve seen before but could not identify. White ducks come in various flavors and… wait for it… they all look alike: white, and like ducks. There are many of this particular breed at the lake. In fact, I also caught a few of them doing a drive-by while I took some video of an egret.
Because she seemed comfortable and busy with her morning routine, I left her where she was and bothered her no more. Although I’ll add she didn’t seem bothered by me much at all. After one quick look when I first approached her, she went right back to grooming and cleaning without a second glance.
[Update] I have since identified the white duck as a pekin duck (a.k.a. domestic duck, white pekin duck, or Long Island duck; Anas domesticus).
I have seen many a collection of stately elms which better deserved to be represented at the General Court than the manikins beneath,—than the barroom and victualling cellar and groceries they overshadowed. When I see their magnificent domes, miles away in the horizon, over intervening valleys and forests, they suggest a village, a community, there. But, after all, it is a secondary consideration whether there are human dwellings beneath them; these may have long since passed away. I find that into my idea of the village has entered more of the elm than of the human being. They are worth many a political borough. They constitute a borough. The poor human representative of his party sent out from beneath their shade will not suggest a tithe of the dignity, the true nobleness and comprehensiveness of the view, the sturdiness and independence, and the serene beneficence that they do. They look from township to township. A fragment of their bark is worth the backs of all the politicians in the union. They are free-soilers in their own broad sense. They send their roots north and south and east into many a conservative’s Kansas and Carolina, who does not suspect such underground railroads,—they improve the subsoil he has never disturbed,—and many times their length, if the support of their principles requires it. They battle with the tempests of a century. See what scars they bear, what limbs they lost before we were born! Yet they never adjourn; they steadily vote for their principles, and send their roots further and wider from the same centre. They die at their posts, and they leave a tough butt for the choppers to exercise themselves about, and a stump which serves for their monument. They attend no caucus, they make no compromise, they use no policy. Their one principle is growth. They combine a true radicalism with a true conservatism. Their radicalism is not cutting away of roots, but an infinite multiplication and extension of them under all surrounding institutions. They take a firmer hold on the earth that they may rise higher into the heavens. Their conservative heartwood, in which no sap longer flows, does not impoverish their growth, but is a firm column to support it; and when their expanding trunks no longer require it, it utterly decays. Their conservatism is a dead but solid heart-wood, which is the pivot and firm column of support to all this growth, appropriating nothing to itself, but forever by its support assisting to extend the area of their radicalism. Half a century after they are dead at the core, they are preserved by radical reforms. They do not, like men, from radicals turn conservative. Their conservative part dies out first; their radical and growing part survives. They acquire new States and Territories, while the old dominions decay, and become the habitation of bears and owls and coons.
— Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps what moves us most in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What beauty in the running brooks! What life! What society! The cold is merely superficial; it is summer still at the core, far, far within. [. . .] I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side, as if deadened…It mingles with the slight murmur of the village, the sound of children at play, as one stream empties gently into another, and the wild and tame are one. What a delicious sound! It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls. . .
— Henry David Thoreau
Along one of the major creeks in the area, I’ve noticed a large number of trees growing along its banks that have found themselves moved nearer and nearer the water. Erosion has taken from them the space that once existed between their lives and the flow’s continuous march toward the lake. This process has left many ancient souls now precariously dangled over the water, trunks leaning toward impending doom. While their roots undoubtedly have stretched far away from the creek with hope of maintaining a strong grasp on solid ground, it looks to me that they can never truly win the battle. Eventually the waters will take from them the very soil upon which they stand.
While I did not capture them in photos, some trees have already taken the plunge. As the woodlands are quite dense just beyond that second picture and I did not make it that far into the thicket during this trip, I’m not certain how many in that area are near collapse or already have fallen from the banks.