AN OUTDOOR LESSON
I have had many a person ask me, “What is the best way to learn about
the out of doors?” and I always answer, “Don’t try to learn _about_
it, but first go out of the house and get into the out of doors. Then
open both eyes, use both of your ears, and stand in one place stock
still as long as you can; and you will soon know the out of doors
itself, which is better than knowing about it.”
“But,” says my learner, “if I go out of the house, I don’t get into
the out of doors at all, but into a city street!”
Look there--in the middle of the street! What is it? An English
sparrow? Yes, an English sparrow--six English sparrows. Are they not a
part of the out of doors? And look up there, over your head--a strip
of sky? Yes--is not a strip of blue sky a part of the out of doors?
Now let me tell you how I learned an outdoor lesson one night along a
crowded city street.
It was a cold, wet night; and the thick, foggy twilight, settling down
into the narrow streets, was full of smoke and smell and chill. A raw
wind blew in from the sea and sent a shiver past every corner. The
street lights blinked, the street mud glistened, the street noises
clashed and rattled, and the street crowds poured up and down and bore
me along with them.
I was homesick--homesick for the country. I longed to hear the sound
of the wind in the pine trees; I longed to hear the single far-away
bark of the dog on the neighboring farm, or the bang of a barndoor, or
the clack of a guinea going to roost. It was half-past five, and
thousands of clerks were pouring from the closing stores; but I was
lonely, homesick for the quiet, the wideness, the trees and sky of the
country.
Feeling thus, and seeing only the strange faces all about me, and the
steep narrow walls of the street high above me, I drifted along, until
suddenly I caught the sound of bird voices shrill and sharp through
the din.
I stopped, but was instantly jostled out of the street, up against a
grim iron fence, to find myself peering through the pickets into an
ancient cemetery in the very heart of Boston.
As I looked, there loomed up in the fog and rain overhead the outlines
of three or four gaunt trees, whose limbs were as thick with sparrows
as they had ever been with leaves. A sparrow roost! Birds, ten
thousand birds, gone to roost in the business section of a great city,
with ten thousand human beings passing under them as they slept!
I got in behind a big waste-barrel by the iron fence and let the crowd
surge past. It was such a sight as I had never seen. I had seen
thousands of chimney swallows go to roost in the deserted chimneys of
a great country house; I had many a time gone down at night to the
great crow-roost in the pines at Cubby Hollow; but I had never
stumbled upon a bird-roost on a crowded city street before!
The hurrying throng behind me thinned and straggled while I waited,
watching by the iron fence. The wind freshened, the mist thickened
into fine rain that came slanting down through the half-lighted trees;
the sleeping sparrows twittered and shifted uneasily on the limbs.
The streets were being deserted. It was going to be a wild night on
the water, and a wild night in the swaying, creaking tops of these old
elm trees. I shivered at the thought of the sparrows sleeping out in
such a night as this, and turned away toward my own snug roost hardly
two blocks away.
The night grew wilder. The wind rattled down our street past a hundred
loose shutters; the rain slapped against the windows, and then stopped
as a heavy gust curled over the line of roofs opposite. I thought of
the sparrows. Had they been driven from the tossing limbs? Could they
cling fast in such a wind, and could they sleep?
Going to the window I looked down into the street. Only the electric
light at the corner showed through the blur of the storm. The street
was empty.
I slipped into my coat and went out; not even a policeman was in
sight. Only the whirling sheets of rain, only the wild sounds of the
wind were with me. The lights flared, but only to fill the streets
with fantastic shadows and to open up a yawning cavern in every deep,
dark doorway.
Keeping in the lee of the shuttered buildings, I made my way to the
sparrow roost. I shall never forget the sight! Not a sparrow had left
his perch, but every bird had now turned, facing the wind--breasting
the wind, I should say; for every head was under a wing, as near as I
could make out, and every breast was toward the storm. Here, on the
limbs, as close as beads on a string, they clung and rocked in the
arms of the wind, every one with his feathers tight to his body, his
tail lying out flat on the storm.
Now there is the outdoor lesson I learned, and that is how I learned
it. And what was the lesson? Why, this: that you are not shut away
from Nature even in the heart of a great city; that the out of doors
lies very close about you, as you hurry down a crowded city street.