At last there is full and complete assurance of spring, in spite of the
baldness of the woods, the barrenness of the fields, bleak with sodden
furrows of last year's ploughing, or pallidly tawny with bleached grass,
and untidy with the jetsam of winter storms and the wide strewn litter
of farms in months of foddering and wood-hauling.
There is full assurance of spring in such incongruities as a phoebe
a-perch on a brown mullein stalk in the midst of grimy snow banks, and
therefrom swooping in airy loops of flight upon the flies that buzz
across this begrimed remnant of winter's ermine, and of squirrelcups
flaunting bloom and fragrance in the face of an ice cascade, which, with
all its glitter gone, hangs in dull whiteness down the ledges, greening
the moss with the moisture of its wasting sheet of pearl.
The woodchuck and chipmunk have got on top of the world again. You hear
the half querulous, half chuckling whistle of the one, the full-mouthed
persistent cluck of the other, voicing recognition of the season.
The song of the brooks has abated something of its first triumphant
swell, and is often overborne now by the jubilant chorus of the birds,
the jangled, liquid gurgle and raucous grating of the blackbirds, the
robin's joyous song with its frequent breaks, as if the thronging notes
outran utterance, the too brief sweetness of the meadowlark's whistle,
the bluebird's carol, the cheery call of the phoebe, the trill of the
song sparrow, and above them all the triumph of the hawk in its regained
possessions of northern sky and earth.
The woods throb with the muffled beat of the partridge's drum and the
sharp tattoo of the woodpecker, and are filled again with the sounds of
insect life, the spasmodic hum of flies, the droning monotone of bees
busy among the catkins and squirrelcups, and you may see a butterfly,
wavering among the gray trees, soon to come to the end of his life,
brief at its longest, drowned in the seductive sweets of a sap bucket.
The squirrels are chattering over the wine of the maple branches they
have broached, in merrier mood than the hare, who limps over the matted
leaves in the raggedness of shifting raiment, fitting himself to a new
inconspicuousness.
We shall not find it unpleasant nor unprofitable to take to the woods
now, for we may be sure that they are pleasanter than the untidy fields.
Where nature has her own way with herself, she makes her garb seemly
even now, after all the tousling and rents she gave it in her angry
winter moods. The scraps of moss, bark, and twigs with which the last
surface of the snow was obtrusively littered lie now unnoticed on the
flat-pressed leaves, an umber carpet dotted here with flecks of moss,
there sprigged with fronds of evergreen fern, purple leaves of
squirrelcups, with their downy buds and first blossoms. Between banks so
clad the brook babbles as joyously as amid all the bloom and leafage of
June, and catches a brighter gleam from the unobstructed sunbeams. So
befittingly are the trees arrayed in graceful tracery of spray and beads
of purpling buds, that their seemly nakedness is as beautiful as attire
of summer's greenness or autumn's gorgeousness could make them.
Never sweeter than now, after the long silence of winter, do the birds'
songs sound, and never in all the round of the year is there a better
time to see them than when the gray haze of the branches is the only
hiding for their gay wedding garments.
If you would try your skill at still-hunting, follow up that muffled
roll that throbs through the woods, and if you discover the ruffed
grouse strutting upon his favorite log, and undiscovered by him can
watch his proud performance, you will have done something better worth
boasting of than bringing him to earth from his hurtling flight.
Out of the distant fields come, sweet and faint, the call of the
meadowlark and the gurgle of the blackbirds that throng the brookside
elms. From high overhead come down the clarion note of the goose, the
sibilant beat of the wild ducks' wings, the bleat of the snipe and the
plover's cry, each making his way to northern breeding grounds. Are you
not glad they are going as safely as their uncaught shadows that sweep
swiftly across the shadowy meshes of the forest floor? Are you not
content to see what you see, hear what you hear, and kill nothing but
time?
Verily, you shall have a clearer conscience than if you were disturbing
the voice of nature with the discordant uproar of your gun, and marring
the fresh odors of spring with the fumes of villainous saltpetre.
In the open marshes the lodges of the muskrats have gone adrift in the
floods; but the unhoused inmates count this a light misfortune, since
they may voyage again with heads above water, and go mate-seeking and
food-gathering in sunshine and starlight, undimmed by roof of ice. As
you see them cutting the smooth surface with long, swift, arrowy wakes,
coasting the low shore in quest of brown sweethearts and wives,
whimpering their plaintive call, you can hardly imagine the clumsy body
between that grim head and rudder-like tail capable of such graceful
motion.
The painted wood drake swims above the submerged tree roots; a pair of
dusky ducks splash to flight, with a raucous clamor, out of a sedgy cove
at your approach; the thronging blackbirds shower liquid melody and hail
of discord from the purple-budded maples above you. All around, from the
drift of floating and stranded water weeds, arises the dry, crackling
croak of frogs, and from sunny pools the vibrant trill of toads.
From afar come the watery boom of a bittern, the song of a trapper and
the hollow clang of his setting pole dropping athwart the gunwales of
his craft, the distant roar of a gun and the echoes rebounding from
shore to shore.
The grateful odor of the warming earth comes to your nostrils; to your
ears, from every side, the sounds of spring; and yet you listen for
fuller confirmation of its presence in the long-drawn wail of the plover
and the rollicking melody of the bobolink.