Fewer and more chill have become the hours of sunlight, and longer
stretch the noontide shadows of the desolate trees athwart the tawny
fields and the dead leaves that mat the floor of the woods.
The brook braids its shrunken strands of brown water with a hushed
murmur over a bed of sodden leaves between borders of spiny ice
crystals, or in the pools swirl in slow circles the imprisoned fleets of
bubbles beneath a steadfast roof of glass. Dark and sullen the river
sulks its cheerless way, enlivened but by the sheldrake that still
courses his prey in the icy water, and the mink that like a fleet black
shadow steals along the silent banks. Gaudy wood duck and swift-winged
teal have long since departed and left stream and shore to these
marauders and to the trapper, who now gathers here his latest harvest.
The marshes are silent and make no sign of life, though beneath the
domes of many a sedge-built roof the unseen muskrats are astir, and
under the icy cover of the channels fare to and fro on their affairs of
life, undisturbed by any turmoil of the upper world.
When the winds are asleep the lake bears on its placid breast the
moveless images of its quiet shores, deserted now by the latest pleasure
seekers among whose tenantless camps the wild wood-folk wander as
fearlessly as if the foot of man had never trodden here. From the still
midwaters far away a loon halloos to the winds to come forth from their
caves, and yells out his mad laughter in anticipation of the coming
storm. A herald breeze blackens the water with its advancing steps, and
with a roar of its trumpets the angry wind sweeps down, driving the
white-crested ranks of waves to assault the shores. Far up the long
incline of pebbly beaches they rush, and leaping up the walls of rock
hang fetters of ice upon the writhing trees. Out of the seething waters
arise lofty columns of vapor, which like a host of gigantic phantoms
stalk, silent and majestic, above the turmoil, till they fall in
wind-tossed showers of frost flakes.
There are days when almost complete silence possesses the woods, yet
listening intently one may hear the continual movement of myriads of
snow fleas pattering on the fallen leaves like the soft purr of such
showers as one might imagine would fall in Lilliput.
With footfall so light that he is seen close at hand sooner than heard,
a hare limps past; too early clad in his white fur that shall make him
inconspicuous amid the winter snow, his coming shines from afar through
the gray underbrush and on the tawny leaves. Unseen amid his dun and
gray environment, the ruffed grouse skulks unheard, till he bursts away
in thunderous flight. Overhead, invisible in the lofty thicket of a
hemlock's foliage, a squirrel drops a slow patter of cone chips, while
undisturbed a nuthatch winds his spiral way down the smooth trunk. Faint
and far away, yet clear, resound the axe strokes of a chopper, and at
intervals the muffled roar of a tree's downfall.
Silent and moveless cascades of ice veil the rocky steeps where in more
genial days tiny rivulets dripped down the ledges and mingled their
musical tinkle with the songs of birds and the flutter of green leaves.
Winter berries and bittersweet still give here and there a fleck of
bright color to the universal gray and dun of the trees, and the carpet
of cast-off leaves and the dull hue of the evergreens but scarcely
relieve the sombreness of the woodland landscape.
Spanning forest and field with a low flat arch of even gray, hangs a sky
as cold as the landscape it domes and whose mountain borders lie hidden
in its hazy foundations. Through this canopy of suspended snow the low
noontide sun shows but a blotch of yellowish gray, rayless and giving
forth no warmth, and, as it slants toward its brief decline, grows yet
dimmer till it is quite blotted out in the gloom of the half-spent
afternoon.
The expectant hush that broods over the forlorn and naked earth is
broken only by the twitter of a flock of snow buntings which, like a
straight-blown flurry of flakes, drift across the fields, and, sounding
solemnly from the depths of the woods, the hollow hoot of a great owl.
Then the first flakes come wavering down, then blurring all the
landscape into vague unreality they fall faster, with a soft purr on
frozen grass and leaves till it becomes unheard on the thickening
noiseless mantle of snow. Deeper and deeper the snow infolds the earth,
covering all its unsightliness of death and desolation.
Now white-furred hare and white-feathered bunting are at one with the
white-clad world wherein they move, and we, so lately accustomed to the
greenness of summer and the gorgeousness of autumn, wondering at the
ease wherewith we accept this marvel of transformation, welcome these
white December days and in them still find content.