WHEN THE OAKS WEAR DAMSON
[Illustration]
The wild ducks are streaming south upon their journey of uncounted days.
Resting a little after sunset upon the cedar-bordered pond, they are
startled into flight again by some hound hunting in the night, and with
beating wing and eerie cry go on. The later flying geese rise clamorous
from among the cat-tails, and in silent haste the blue heron and the
pair of sad old cranes that had roosted in a dead elm alongshore take
the chill, invisible trail. When day comes in spreading fire the crows
will humorously watch these wander-birds from the forest edges. They
feel no southward impulse. Circling the clearing, they comment in uproar
upon the most advisable oak for their afternoon symposium, expand their
polished feathers, and, seated in a derisive row, caw a farewell to the
wader's long, departing legs. Now the mountaineer's girl, remembering
Old World peasant tales that never have been told her, hurries indoors
at nightfall from the hallooing specter of the Wild Huntsman in the
clouds, who is but the anxious leader of the flying wedge.
[Illustration]
Buckwheat stubble in October is such a crimson as no Fiesolan rose
garden ever unfurled. Gray hill slopes of the North are festal with its
color, insistent even through rains, glowing from rose madder to maroon.
Lower stretches out the pale yellow of oats stubble, which breaks into
flashing splinters under the noon sun. The wheat fields show ocher, and
darker--burnt sienna at the roots--lie the reaped fields of barley. Small
rash flowers, fancying that the ground between the grain stalks has been
cultivated especially for them, now that they see the sun freely again,
put on the petals of spring amid this fair desolation. Strawberry
blossoms, visibly fey, appear; long-stemmed and scanty-flowered fall
dandelions; an ill-timed display of April's buttercups. The blackberry
vines go richly dyed--superb red-velvet settings for the jewels of frost.
Down in the valley, through the wood-smoke haze, move the slow apple
wagons through the lanes. This is appleland. Northern Spy and Lemon
Pippin are ripe to cracking; Baldwins will be mellow by Twelfth-night,
the russet at Easter. Gorgeous and ephemeral hangs the Maiden's Blush.
The strawberry apples are like embers on the little trees, rubies of the
orchard. Lady Sweets and Dominies are respectfully being urged into the
cellar, and for those who will pay to learn the falseness of this
world's shows the freight cars are receiving Ben Davises. Sheep-noses,
left often on the boughs, will hold cold nectar after the black frosts
have killed the last marigold. They lie, dull red, by the orchard fence
in the early snow, their blunt expression revealing no secrets. You have
to know about them. Nothing is more inscrutable than a sheep-nose.
Fast above the indigo crests stir the light clouds, harried by the west
wind whereon the hawk floats across the valley. In the afternoon
October's lover takes the hill path, mica-gemmed, that leads between
birches of the translucent yellow leaf and maples still green but
wearing scarlet woodbine like a gypsy's sash. For here the sunset
lingers till the stars, though from the valley's goblet evening has
sipped the waning sunlight like a clear amber wine. But take at morning
the path through brown lowgrounds, or close along the wood where frost
sleeps late, for here that flower of desire, the fringed gentian, grows.
Its blue is less mysterious and deep than the closed gentian's, and yet
how many name it the cup of autumn delight!
In the woods where leafless boughs give them blue sky at last are
revealed in quaint perfection the ferneries of the moss: palm trees
towering higher than a snail's house, gallant green plumes with
cornelians at the tip, vast tropical forests spreading for long inches,
gray trailing rivers and orange cliffs of lichen, leagues of delicate
jungle lost under a fallen leaf. A beetle clad in shining mail presses
through the wilderness. A cobalt dragonfly lights on a shaken palm.
Pursuing a rolling hickory nut, the chipmunk brings a hurricane--but
these are elastic trees.
That same mischief maker, incurably curious, chases every stranger,
shooting along the stone wall and pausing to peer out from the crevices
with unregenerate eyes. The handsome but vain woodpecker pounds at the
grub-dowered tree he has chosen to persecute. Enormously ingenuous, the
wayside cow lumbers reproachfully out of the path, knocking the grains
of excellent make-believe coffee from the withered dock. The drumming of
a partridge in his solitary transport sounds where reddened dogwood
glorifies a clump of firs. Sometimes the kittle pheasant, hardly at
home in our woods, ducks her head and vanishes in the briers.
[Illustration]
Now the harvest moon, yellower than the hunter's moon of ending autumn
or the strawberry moon that looks upon June's roses, rises for husking
time. It is the last harvest; when the corn is in, winter comes. Piled,
tumbling ears, their grain set in many a curious pattern, go by to the
sorting floor and crib, with pumpkins, the satraps of New England,
perched in rickety fashion on the gleaming load. The mountain ash hangs
flamboyant clusters along the road from the field. Obedient to the
frost, the acorns are dropping, and the first chestnuts lie, polished
mahogany, in the whitened grass at sunrise. The shagbark has scattered
its largess, the butternut its dainties in their staining coats. Against
the slopes the tinted fern patches show bronze, russet, and pansy brown.
Speaking October and our own purple East, the tall asters, darkening
from lavender to the ultimate shadowy violet, join the goldenrod. Sumacs
are thronging, with their proudly blazoned crests; the haw is hung with
Chinese scarlet lanterns; sweetbrier, stem and leaf, is scented of
menthol and spices of the Orient. The oaks stand regal in umber and
damson. Who that has known October could ever forget? How quiet the
nights are after frost!