A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS FALL
I
You ought to go out into the fields and woods as many as six times
this fall, even though you have to take a long street-car ride to get
out of the city. Let me give you just six bits of sound advice about
going afield:--
First, go often to the same place, so that you can travel over and
over the same ground and become very familiar with it. The first trip
you will not see much but woods and fields. But after that, each
succeeding walk will show you _particular_ things--this dead tree with
the flicker’s hole, that old rail-pile with its rabbit-hole--until, by
and by, you will know every turn and dip, every pile of stones, every
hole and nest; and you will find a thousand things that on the first
trip you didn’t dream were there.
Secondly, when you go into the woods, go _expecting_ to see something
in particular--always looking for some particular nest, bird, beast,
or plant. You may not find that particular thing, but your eyes will
be sharpened by your expectation and purpose, and you will be pretty
sure therefore to see something. At worst you will come back with a
disappointment, and that is better than coming back without a thing!
Thirdly, go off when you can alone. Don’t be selfish, unsociable,
offish--by no means that. But you must learn to use your own eyes and
ears, think your own thoughts, make your own discoveries, and follow
the hints and hopes that you alone can have. Go with the school class
for a picnic, but for woodcraft go alone.
Fourthly, learn first of all in the woods to be as silent as an Indian
and as patient as a granite rock. Practice standing still when the
mosquitoes sing, and fixing your mind on the hole under the stump
instead of the hole the mosquito is boring between your eyes.
Fifthly, go out in every variety of weather, and at night, as well as
during the day. There are three scenes to every day--morning, noon,
and early evening--when the very actors themselves are changed. To one
who has never been in the fields at daybreak, the world is so new, so
fresh and strange, as to seem like a different planet. And then the
evening--the hour of dusk and the deeper, darker night! Go once this
autumn into the woods at night.
And lastly, don’t go into the woods as if they were a kind of Noah’s
Ark; for you cannot enter the door and find all the animals standing
in a row. You will go a great many times before seeing them all. Don’t
be disappointed if they are not so plentiful there as they are in your
books. Nature books are like menageries--the animals are caught and
caged for you. The woods are better than books and just as full of
things, as soon as you learn to take a hint, to read the signs, to put
two and two together and get--four--four paws--black paws, with a long
black snout, a big ringed and bushy tail--a coon!
II
Whether you live in the heart of a great city or in the open country,
you ought to begin this fall to learn the names and habits of the
birds and beasts (snakes, lizards, turtles, toads!) that live wild in
your region. Even when all the summer birds have gone south for the
winter, there will remain in your woods and fields crows, jays,
juncos, tree sparrows, chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, screech owls,
barred owls,--perhaps even snowy owls,--quails, partridges,
goldfinches, with now and then a flock of crossbills, snow buntings,
and other northern visitors, and even a flicker, robin, and bluebird
left over from the fall migrations. These are plenty to begin on; and
yet, as they are so few, compared with the numbers of the summer, the
beginner’s work is thus all the easier in the autumn.
III
You should go out one of these frosty mornings for chestnuts, if they
grow in your woods; or for “shagbarks,” if you live in New England;
for black walnuts, if you live in the Middle States; for pecan nuts,
if you live in the Gulf States; for butternuts, if you live in the
states of the Middle West; for--what kind of nuts can you not go for,
if you live in California where they make everything grow! It matters
little whether you go for paper-shelled English walnuts or for
plate-armored pignuts so long as you _go_. It is the going that is
worth while.
IV
You ought to go “cocooning” this fall--to sharpen your eyes. But do
not go often; for once you begin to look for cocoons, you are in
danger of seeing nothing else--except brown leaves. And how many brown
leaves, that look like cocoons, there are! They tease you to vexation.
But a day now and then “cocooning” will do you no harm; indeed, it
will cultivate your habit of concentration and close seeing as will no
other kind of hunting I know.
Bring home with you the big brown silky cocoons of cecropia--the
largest cocoon you will find, lashed all along its length to its twig,
and usually near the ground. Look on the black cherry, the barberry,
sassafras, and roadside and garden trees for the harder, whiter cocoon
of the promethea moth. This hangs by its tip, because the caterpillar
has begun his house by using the leaf, spinning it into the cocoon as
part of its walls, much as does the wretched “brown-tail.” The gray
cocoons, or rather nests, of this “brown-tail” moth you must bring
home to burn, for they are one of our greatest pests. You will find
them full of tiny caterpillars as you tear them open.
Bring home your collection and, with the help of such a book as “Moths
and Butterflies” by Mary C. Dickerson, identify them and hang them up
for their “coming out” in the spring.
V
If you live in the city, you ought to go up frequently to your roof
and watch for the birds that fly over. If in one of our many cities
near the water, you will have a chance that those in the country
seldom have, of seeing the seabirds--the white herring gulls (the
young gulls are brown, and look like a different species), as they
pass over whistling plaintively, and others of the wild seafowl, that
merely to hear and see in the smoky air of the city, is almost as
refreshing as an ocean voyage. Then there are the parks and public
gardens--never without their birds and, at the fall migrating time,
often sheltering the very rarest of visitors.
VI
In order to give point and purpose to one of these autumn outings, you
should take your basket, or botanizing can, and scour the woods and
fields for autumn berries. No bunch of flowers in June could be
lovelier than the bunch of autumn berries that you can gather from
thicket and wayside to carry home. And then, in order to enjoy the
trip all over again, read James Buckham’s exquisite story, “A Quest
for Fall Berries,” in his book, “Where Town and Country Meet.”
VII
Take your botany can on a trip toward the end of November and see how
many blossoming flowers you can bring home from the woods. Wild
flowers _after_ Thanksgiving in any northern state? Make the search,
on all the southern slopes and in all the sheltered corners and see
for yourselves. When you get back, you will want to read Mr. Bradford
Torrey’s account of the flowers that he found blossoming out of doors
in New England in the month of November. But who is Mr. Bradford
Torrey? and where can you find this account of his November walk? You
do not know? Well, then there is something more for you to do this
fall.
VIII
While you are finding out who Mr. Torrey is and what he has written,
you should also get acquainted with John Burroughs, Olive Thorne
Miller, Thoreau, Frank Bolles, William Hamilton Gibson, C. C. Abbott,
Edward Breck, Gilbert White, and--but these will do for _this_ fall.
Don’t fail to read dear old Gilbert White’s “Natural History of
Selborne”; though perhaps we grown-ups like it better than you may
this fall. If you don’t understand Gilbert White, then read this year
“The Life of a Scotch Naturalist” by Samuel Smiles, and Arabella
Buckley’s two books, “Life and Her Children,” and “Winners in Life’s
Race.”
IX
You ought to tie up a piece of suet for the birds; keep your cat in
the house, except during the middle of the day, and--but I shall tell
you no more. There is no end to the interesting things to do in your
study of the out of doors and in your tramps afield this autumn.