When I awoke on the morning after the last described arrival at “home,”
I thought of the angry glow in the east at sunrise of the day before.
It had been cold again over night, so cold that in the small cottage,
whatever was capable of freezing, froze to its very core. The frost had
even penetrated the hole which in this “teacher’s residence” made shift
for a cellar, and, in spite of their being covered with layer upon layer
of empty bags, had sweetened the winter’s supply of potatoes.
But towards morning there had been a let-up, a sudden rise in
temperature, as we experience it so often, coincident with a change in
the direction of the wind, which now blew rather briskly from the south,
foreboding a storm.
I got the horses ready at an early hour, for I was going to try the
roundabout way at last, forty-five miles of it; and never before had I
gone over the whole of it in winter. Even in summer I had done so only
once, and that in a car, when I had accompanied the school-inspector on
one of his trips. I wanted to make sure that I should be ready in time
to start at ten o’clock in the morning.
This new road had chiefly two features which recommended it to me.
Firstly, about thirty-eight miles out of forty-five led through a fairly
well settled district where I could hope to find a chain of short-haul
trails. The widest gap in this series of settlements was one of two
miles where there was wild land. The remaining seven miles, it is true,
led across that wilderness on the east side of which lay Bell’s farm.
This piece, however, I knew so well that I felt sure of finding my
way there by night or day in any reasonable kind of weather. Nor did I
expect to find it badly drifted. And secondly, about twenty-nine miles
from “home” I should pass within one mile of a town which boasted
of boarding house and livery stable, offering thus, in case of an
emergency, a convenient stopping place.
I watched the sky rather anxiously, not so much on my own account as
because my wife, seeing me start, would worry a good deal should that
start be made in foul weather. At nine the sky began to get grey in
spots. Shortly after a big cloud came sailing up, and I went out to
watch it. And sure enough, it had that altogether loose appearance, with
those wind-torn, cottony appendages hanging down from its darker upper
body which are sure to bring snow. Lower away in the south--a rare thing
to come from the south in our climate--there lay a black squall-cloud
with a rounded outline, like a big windbag, resembling nothing so much
as a fat boy’s face with its cheeks blown out, when he tries to fill a
football with the pressure from his lungs. That was an infallible sign.
The first cloud, which was travelling fast, might blow over. The second,
larger one was sure to bring wind a-plenty. But still there was hope. So
long as it did not bring outright snow, my wife would not worry so much.
Here where she was, the snow would not drift--there was altogether
too much bush. She--not having been much of an observer of the skies
before--dreaded the snowstorm more than the blizzard. I knew the latter
was what portended danger.
When I turned back into the house, a new thought struck me. I spoke to
my wife, who was putting up a lunch for me, and proposed to take her and
our little girl over to a neighbour’s place a mile and a half west of
the school. Those people were among the very few who had been decent to
her, and the visit would beguile the weary Sunday afternoon. She agreed
at once. So we all got ready; I brought the horses out and hooked them
up, alone--no trouble from them this morning: they were quiet enough
when they drank deep at the well.
A few whirls of snow had come down meanwhile--not enough, however, as
yet to show as a new layer on the older snow. Again a cloud had torn
loose from that squall-bag on the horizon, and again it showed that
cottony, fringy, whitish under layer which meant snow. I raised the top
of the cutter and fastened the curtains.
By the time we three piled in, the thin flakes were dancing all around
again, dusting our furs with their thin, glittering crystals. I bandied
baby-talk with the little girl to make things look cheerful, but there
was anguish in the young woman’s look. I saw she would like to ask me to
stay over till Monday, but she knew that I considered it my duty to get
back to town by night.
The short drive to the neighbour’s place was pleasant enough. There was
plenty of snow on this part of the correction line, which farther east
was bare; and it was packed down by abundant traffic. Then came the
parting. I kissed wife and child; and slowly, accompanied by much waving
of hands on the part of the little girl and a rather depressed looking
smile on that of my wife, I turned on the yard and swung back to the
road. The cliffs of black poplar boles engulfed me at once: a sheltered
grade.
But I had not yet gone very far--a mile perhaps, or a little over--when
the trees began to bend under the impact of that squall. Nearly at the
same moment the sun, which so far had been shining in an intermittent
way, was blotted from the sky, and it turned almost dusky. For a long
while--for more than an hour, indeed--it had seemed as if that black
squall-cloud were lying motionless at the horizon--an anchored ship,
bulging at its wharf. But then, as if its moorings had been cast off, or
its sails unfurled, it travelled up with amazing speed. The wind had an
easterly slant to it--a rare thing with us for a wind from that quarter
to bring a heavy storm. The gale had hardly been blowing for ten or
fifteen minutes, when the snow began to whirl down. It came in the
tiniest possible flakes, consisting this time of short needles that
looked like miniature spindles, strung with the smallest imaginable
globules of ice--no six-armed crystals that I could find so far. Many a
snowstorm begins that way with us. And there was even here, in the chasm
of the road, a swing and dance to the flakes that bespoke the force of
the wind above.
My total direction--after I should have turned off the correction
line--lay to the southeast; into the very teeth of the wind. I had to
make it by laps though, first south, then east, then south again, with
the exception of six or seven miles across the wild land west of Bell’s
corner; there, as nearly as I could hold the direction, I should have to
strike a true line southeast.
I timed my horses; I could not possibly urge them on to-day. They took
about nine minutes to the mile, and I knew I should have to give them
many a walk. That meant at best a drive of eight hours. It would be dark
before I reached town. I did not mind that, for I knew there would be
many a night drive ahead, and I felt sure that that half-mile on the
southern correction line, one mile from town, would have been gone
over on Saturday by quite a number of teams. The snow settles down
considerably, too, in thirty hours, especially under the pressure of
wind. If a trail had been made over the drift, I was confident my horses
would find it without fail. So I dismissed all anxiety on my own score.
But all the more did the thought of my wife worry me. If only I could
have made her see things with my own eyes--but I could not. She regarded
me as an invalid whose health was undermined by a wasting illness and
who needed nursing and coddling on the slightest provocation. Instead of
drawing Nature’s inference that, what cannot live, should die, she clung
to the slender thread of life that sometimes threatened to break--but
never on these drives. I often told her that, if I could make my
living by driving instead of teaching, I should feel the stronger,
the healthier, and the better for it--my main problem would have been
solved. But she, with a woman’s instinct for shelter and home, cowered
down before every one of Nature’s menaces. And yet she bore up with
remarkable courage.
A mile or so before I came to the turn in my road the forest withdrew on
both sides, yielding space to the fields and elbow-room for the wind
to unfold its wings. As soon as its full force struck the cutter, the
curtains began to emit that crackling sound which indicates to the
sailor that he has turned his craft as far into the wind as he can
safely do without losing speed. Little ripples ran through the bulging
canvas. As yet I sat snug and sheltered within, my left shoulder turned
to the weather, but soon I sighted dimly a curtain of trees that ran at
right angles to my road. Behind it there stood a school building, and
beyond that I should have to turn south. I gave the horses a walk. I
decided to give them a walk of five minutes for every hour they trotted
along. We reached the corner that way and I started them up again.
Instantly things changed. We met the wind at an angle of about thirty
degrees from the southeast. The air looked thick ahead. I moved into the
left-hand corner of the seat, and though the full force of the wind did
not strike me there, the whirling snow did not respect my shelter. It
blew in slantways under the top, then described a curve upward, and
downward again, as if it were going to settle on the right end of the
back. But just before it touched the back, it turned at a sharp angle
and piled on to my right side. A fair proportion of it reached my face
which soon became wet and then caked over with ice. There was a sting
to the flakes which made them rather disagreeable. My right eye kept
closing up, and I had to wipe it ever so often to keep it open. The
wind, too, for the first and only time on my drives, somehow found an
entrance into the lower part of the cutter box, and though my feet were
resting on the heater and my legs were wrapped, first in woollen and
then in leather leggings, besides being covered with a good fur robe, my
left side soon began to feel the cold. It may be that this comparative
discomfort, which I had to endure for the better part of the day,
somewhat coloured the kind of experience this drive became.
As far as the road was concerned, I had as yet little to complain of.
About three miles from the turn there stood a Lutheran church frequented
by the Russian Germans that formed a settlement for miles around. They
had made the trail for me on these three miles, and even for a matter of
four or five miles south of the church, as I found out. It is that kind
of a road which you want for long drives: where others who have short
drives and, therefore, do not need to consider their horses break the
crust of the snow and pack it down. I hoped that a goodly part of my
day’s trip would be in the nature of a chain of shorter, much frequented
stretches; and on the whole I was not to be disappointed.
Doubtless all my readers know how a country road that is covered with
from two to three feet of snow will look when the trail is broken. There
is a smooth expanse, mostly somewhat hardened at the surface, and there
are two deep-cut tracks in it, each about ten to twelve inches wide,
sharply defined, with the snow at the bottom packed down by the horses’
feet and the runners of the respective conveyances. So long as you have
such a trail and horses with road sense, you do not need to worry about
your directions, no matter how badly it may blow. Horses that are used
to travelling in the snow will never leave the trail, for they dread
nothing so much as breaking in on the sides. This fact released my
attention for other things.
Now I thought again for a while of home, of how my wife would
be worrying, how even the little girl would be infected by her
nervousness--how she would ask, “Mamma, is Daddy in... now?” But I did
not care to follow up these thoughts too far. They made me feel too
soft.
After that I just sat there for a while and looked ahead. But I saw only
the whirl, whirl, whirl of the snow slanting across my field of vision.
You are closed in by it as by insecure and ever receding walls when you
drive in a snowstorm. If I had met a team, I could not have seen it, and
if my safety had depended on my discerning it in time to turn out of the
road, my safety would not have been very safe indeed. But I could rely
on my horses: they would hear the bells of any encountering conveyance
long enough ahead to betray it to me by their behaviour. And should I
not even notice that, they would turn out in time of their own accord:
they had a great deal of road sense.
Weariness overcame me. In the open the howling and whistling of the wind
always acts on me like a soporific. Inside of a house it is just the
reverse; I know nothing that will keep my nerves as much on edge and
prevent me as certainly from sleeping as the voices at night of a gale
around the buildings. I needed something more definite to look at than
that prospect ahead. The snow was by this time piling in on the seat at
my right and in the box, so as to exclude all drafts except from below I
felt that as a distinct advantage.
Without any conscious intention I began to peer out below the slanting
edge of the left side-curtain and to watch the sharp crest-wave of
snow-spray thrown by the curve of the runner where it cut into the
freshly accumulating mass. It looked like the wing-wave thrown to either
side by the bow of a power boat that cuts swiftly through quiet water.
From it my eye began to slip over to the snow expanse. The road was
wide, lined with brush along the fence to the left. The fields beyond
had no very large open areas--windbreaks had everywhere been spared
out when the primeval forest had first been broken into by the early
settlers. So whatever the force of the wind might be, no high drift
layer could form. But still the snow drifted. There was enough coming
down from above to supply material even on such a narrow strip as a road
allowance. It was the manner of this drifting that held my eye and my
attention at last.
All this is, of course, utterly trivial. I had observed it myself a
hundred times before. I observe it again to-day at this very writing,
in the first blizzard of the season. It always has a strange fascination
for me; but maybe I need to apologize for setting it down in writing.
The wind would send the snowflakes at a sharp angle downward to the
older surface. There was no impact, as there is with rain. The flakes,
of course, did not rebound. But they did not come to rest either, not
for the most imperceptible fraction of time. As soon as they touched the
white, underlying surface, they would start to scud along horizontally
at a most amazing speed, forming with their previous path an obtuse
angle. So long as I watched the single flake--which is quite a task,
especially while driving--it seemed to be in a tremendous hurry.
It rushed along very nearly at the speed of the wind, and that was
considerable, say between thirty-five and forty miles an hour or even
more. But then, when it hit the trail, the crack made by horses and
runners, strange to say, it did not fall down perpendicularly, as it
would have done had it acted there under the influence of gravity alone;
but it started on a curved path towards the lower edge of the opposite
wall of the crack and there, without touching the wall, it started back,
first downward, thus making the turn, and then upward again, towards the
upper edge of the east wall, and not in a straight line either, but in a
wavy curve, rising very nearly but not quite to the edge; and only then
would it settle down against the eastern wall of the track, helping to
fill it in. I watched this with all the utmost effort of attention of
which I was capable. I became intensely interested in my observations. I
even made sure--as sure as anybody can be of anything--that the whole of
this curious path lay in the same perpendicular plane which ran from the
southeast to the northwest, that is to say in the direction of the main
current of the wind. I have since confirmed these observations many
times.
I am aware of the fact that nobody--nobody whom I know, at least--takes
the slightest interest in such things. People watch birds because some
“Nature-Study-cranks” (I am one of them) urge it in the schools. Others
will make desultory observations on “Weeds” or “Native Trees.” Our
school work in this respect seems to me to be most ridiculously and
palpably superficial. Worst of all, most of it is dry as dust, and it
leads nowhere. I sometimes fear there is something wrong with my own
mentality. But to me it seems that the Kingdom of Heaven lies all around
us, and that most of us simply prefer the moving-picture-show. I have
kept weather records for whole seasons--brief notes on the everyday
observations of mere nothings. You, for whom above all I am setting
these things down, will find them among my papers one day. They would
seem meaningless to most of my fellow men, I believe; to me they are
absorbingly interesting reading when once in a great while I pick an
older record up and glance it over. But this is digressing.
Now slowly, slowly another fact came home to me. This unanimous,
synchronous march of all the flakes coming down over hundreds of square
miles--and I was watching it myself over miles upon miles of road--in
spite of the fact that every single flake seemed to be in the greatest
possible hurry--was, judged as a whole, nevertheless an exceedingly
leisurely process. In one respect it reminded me of bees swarming;
watch the single bee, and it seems to fly at its utmost speed; watch the
swarm, and it seems to be merely floating along. The reason, of course,
is entirely different. The bees wheel and circle around individually,
the whole swarm revolves--if I remember right, Burroughs has well
described it (as what has he not?). [Footnote: Yes; I looked it up. See
the “Pastoral Bees” in “Locusts and Wild Honey.”] But the snow will not
change its direction while drifting in a wind that blows straight ahead.
Its direction is from first to last the resultant of the direction
of the wind and that of the pull of gravity, into which there enters
besides only the ratio of the strengths of these two forces. The single
snowflake is to the indifferent eye something infinitesimal, too small
to take individual notice of, once it reaches the ground. For most of us
it hardly has any separate existence, however it may be to more astute
observers. We see the flakes in the mass, and we judge by results. Now
firstly, to talk of results, the filling up of a hollow, unless the
drifting snow is simply picked up from the ground where it lay ready
from previous falls, proceeds itself rather slowly and in quite a
leisurely way. But secondly, and this is the more important reason, the
wind blows in waves of greater and lesser density; these waves--and I
do not know whether this observation has ever been recorded though
doubtless it has been made by better observers than I am--these waves,
I say, are propagated in a direction opposite to that of the wind. They
are like sound-waves sent into the teeth of the wind, only they travel
more slowly. Anybody who has observed a really splashing rain on smooth
ground--on a cement sidewalk, for instance--must have observed that the
rebounding drops, like those that are falling, form streaks, because
they, too, are arranged in vertical layers--or sheets--of greater and
lesser density--or maybe the term “frequency” would be more appropriate;
and these streaks travel as compared with the wind, and, as compared
with its direction, they travel against it. It is this that causes the
curious criss-cross pattern of falling and rebounding rain-streaks in
heavy showers. Quite likely there are more competent observers who might
analyze these phenomena better than I can do it; but if nobody else
does, maybe I shall one day make public a little volume containing
observations on our summer rains. But again I am digressing.
The snow, then, hits the surface of the older layers in waves, no matter
whether the snow is freshly falling or merely drifting; and it is these
waves that you notice most distinctly. Although they travel with the
wind when you compare their position with points on the ground--yet,
when compared with the rushing air above, it becomes clear that they
travel against it. The waves, I say, not the flakes. The single flake
never stops in its career, except as it may be retarded by friction
and other resistances. But the aggregation of the multitudes of flakes,
which varies constantly in its substance, creates the impression as if
the snow travelled very much more slowly than in reality it does. In
other words, every single flake, carried on by inertia, constantly
passes from one air wave to the next one, but the waves themselves
remain relatively stationary. They swing along in undulating,
comparatively slow-moving sheets which may simply be retarded behind the
speed of the wind, but more probably form an actual reaction, set up by
a positive force counteracting the wind, whatever its origin may be.
When at last I had fully satisfied my mind as to the somewhat
complicated mechanics of this thing, I settled back in my seat--against
a cushion of snow that had meanwhile piled in behind my spine. If I
remember right, I had by this time well passed the church. But for a
while longer I looked out through the triangular opening between the
door of the cutter and the curtain. I did not watch snowflakes or waves
any longer, but I matured an impression. At last it ripened into words.
Yes, the snow, as figured in the waves, CRAWLED over the ground. There
was in the image that engraved itself on my memory something cruel--I
could not help thinking of the “cruel, crawling foam” and the ruminating
pedant Ruskin, and I laughed. “The cruel, crawling snow!” Yes, and in
spite of Ruskin and his “Pathetic Fallacy,” there it was! Of course, the
snow is not cruel. Of course, it merely is propelled by something
which, according to Karl Pearson, I do not even with a good scientific
conscience dare to call a “force” any longer. But nevertheless, it made
the impression of cruelty, and in that lay its fascination and beauty.
It even reminded me of a cat slowly reaching out with armed claw for the
“innocent” bird. But the cat is not cruel either--we merely call it so!
Oh, for the juggling of words!...
Suddenly my horses brought up on a farmyard. They had followed the last
of the church-goers’ trails, had not seen any other trail ahead and
faithfully done their horse-duty by staying on what they considered to
be the road.
I had reached the northern limit of that two-mile stretch of wild land.
In summer there is a distinct and good road here, but for the present
the snow had engulfed it. When I had turned back to the bend of the
trail, I was for the first time up against a small fraction of what was
to come. No trail, and no possibility of telling the direction in which
I was going! Fortunately I realized the difficulty right from the start.
Before setting out, I looked back to the farm and took my bearings from
the fence of the front yard which ran north-south. Then I tried to hold
to the line thus gained as best I could. It was by no means an easy
matter, for I had to wind my weary way around old and new drifts, brush
and trees. The horses were mostly up to their knees in snow, carefully
lifting their hindlegs to place them in the cavities which their
forelegs made. Occasionally, much as I tried to avoid it, I had to make
a short dash through a snow dam thrown up over brush that seemed to
encircle me completely. The going, to be sure, was not so heavy as it
had been the day before on the corner of the marsh, but on the other
hand I could not see as far beyond the horses’ heads. And had I been
able to see, the less conspicuous landmarks would not have helped
me since I did not know them. It took us about an hour to cross this
untilled and unfenced strip. I came out on the next crossroad, not
more than two hundred yards east of where I should have come out. I
considered that excellent; but I soon was to understand that it was
owing only to the fact that so far I had had no flying drifts to go
through. Up to this point the snow was “crawling” only wherever the
thicket opened up a little. What blinded my vision had so far been only
the new, falling snow.
I am sure I looked like a snowman. Whenever I shook my big gauntlets
bare, a cloud of exceedingly fine and hard snow crystals would hit my
face; and seeing how much I still had ahead, I cannot say that I liked
the sensation. I was getting thoroughly chilled by this time. The
mercury probably stood at somewhere between minus ten and twenty. The
very next week I made one trip at forty below--a thermometer which I
saw and the accuracy of which I have reason to doubt showed minus
forty-eight degrees. Anyway, it was the coldest night of the winter, but
I was not to suffer then. I remember how about five in the morning, when
I neared the northern correction line, my lips began to stiffen; hard,
frozen patches formed on my cheeks, and I had to allow the horses to rub
their noses on fence posts or trees every now and then, to knock the
big icicles off and to prevent them from freezing up altogether--but.
my feet and my hands and my body kept warm, for there was no wind. On
drives like these your well-being depends largely on the state of your
feet and hands. But on this return trip I surely did suffer. Every
now and then my fingers would turn curd-white, and I had to remove my
gauntlets and gloves, and to thrust my hands under my wraps, next to
my body. I also froze two toes rather badly. And what I remember as
particularly disagreeable, was that somehow my scalp got chilled.
Slowly, slowly the wind seemed to burrow its way under my fur-cap and
into my hair. After a while it became impossible for me to move scalp
or brows. One side of my face was now thickly caked over with ice--which
protected, but also on account of its stiffness caused a minor
discomfort. So far, however, I had managed to keep both my eyes at work.
And for a short while I needed them just now.
We were crossing a drift which had apparently not been broken into since
it had first been piled up the previous week. Such drifts are dangerous
because they will bear up for a while under the horses’ weight, and then
the hard pressed crust will break and reveal a softer core inside. Just
that happened here, and exactly at a moment, too, when the drifting
snow caught me with its full force and at its full height. It was a
quarter-minute of stumbling, jumping, pulling one against the other--and
then a rally, and we emerged in front of a farmyard from which a fairly
fresh trail led south. This trail was filled in, it is true, for the
wind here pitched the snow by the shovelful, but the difference in
colour between the pure white, new snow that filled it and the older
surface to both sides made it sufficiently distinct for the horses to
guide them. They plodded along.
Here miles upon miles of open fields lay to the southeast, and the snow
that fell over all these fields was at once picked up by the wind and
started its irresistible march to the northwest. And no longer did it
crawl. Since it was bound upon a long-distance trip, somewhere in its
career it would be caught in an upward sweep of the wind and thrown
aloft, and then it would hurtle along at the speed of the wind, blotting
everything from sight, hitting hard whatever it encountered, and piling
in wherever it found a sheltered space. The height of this drifting snow
layer varies, of course, directly and jointly (here the teacher makes
fun of his mathematics) as the amount of loose snow available and as the
carrying force of the wind. Many, many years ago I once saved the day
by climbing on to the seat of my cutter and looking around from this
vantage-point. I was lost and had no idea of where I was. There was no
snowstorm going on at the time, but a recent snowfall was being driven
along by a merciless northern gale. As soon as I stood erect on my
seat, my head reached into a less dense drift layer, and I could clearly
discern a farmhouse not more than a few hundred yards away. I had been
on the point of accepting it as a fact that I was lost. Those tactics
would not have done on this particular day, there being the snowstorm to
reckon with. For the moment, not being lost, I was in no need of them,
anyway. But even later the possible but doubtful advantage to be gained
by them seemed more than offset by the great and certain disadvantage of
having to get out of my robes and to expose myself to the chilling wind.
This north-south road was in the future invariably to seem endlessly
long to me. There were no very prominent landmarks--a school
somewhere--and there was hardly any change in the monotony of driving.
As for landmarks, I should mention that there was one more at least.
About two miles from the turn into that town which I have mentioned I
crossed a bridge, and beyond this bridge the trail sloped sharply up
in an s-shaped curve to a level about twenty or twenty-five feet higher
than that of the road along which I had been driving. The bridge had a
rail on its west side; but the other rail had been broken down in some
accident and had never been replaced. I mention this trifle because it
became important in an incident during the last drive which I am going
to describe.
On we went. We passed the school of which I did not see much except the
flagpole. And then we came to the crossroads where the trail bent west
into the town. If I had known the road more thoroughly, I should have
turned there, too. It would have added another two miles to my already
overlong trip, but I invariably did it later on. Firstly, the horses
will rest up much more completely when put into a stable for feeding.
And secondly, there always radiate from a town fairly well beaten
trails. It is a mistake to cut across from one such trail to another.
The straight road, though much shorter, is apt to be entirely
untravelled, and to break trail after a heavy snowstorm is about as hard
a task as any that you can put your team up against. I had the road;
there was no mistaking it; it ran along between trees and fences which
were plainly visible; but there were ditches and brush buried under the
snow which covered the grade to a depth of maybe three feet, and every
bit of these drifts was of that treacherous character that I have
described.
If you look at some small drift piled up, maybe, against the glass pane
of a storm window, you can plainly see how the snow, even in such
a miniature pile, preserves the stratified appearance which is the
consequence of its being laid down in layers of varying density. Now
after it has been lying for some time, it will form a crust on top which
is sometimes the effect of wind pressure and sometimes--under favourable
conditions--of superficial glaciation. A similar condensation takes
place at the bottom as the result of the work of gravity: a harder core
will form. Between the two there is layer upon layer of comparatively
softer snow. In these softer layers the differences which are due to the
stratified precipitation still remain. And frequently they will make the
going particularly uncertain; for a horse will break through in stages
only. He thinks that he has reached the carrying stratum, gets ready to
take his next step--thereby throwing his whole weight on two or at best
three feet--and just when he is off his balance, there is another caving
in. I believe it is this what makes horses so nervous when crossing
drifts. Later on in the winter there is, of course, the additional
complication of successive snowfalls. The layers from this cause are
usually clearly discernible by differences in colour.
I have never figured out just how far I went along this entirely
unbroken road, but I believe it must have been for two miles. I know
that my horses were pretty well spent by the time we hit upon another
trail. It goes without saying that this trail, too, though it came from
town, had not been gone over during the day and therefore consisted of
nothing but a pair of whiter ribbons on the drifts; but underneath these
ribbons the snow was packed. Hardly anybody cares to be out on a day
like that, not even for a short drive. And though in this respect I
differ in my tastes from other people, provided I can keep myself from
actually getting chilled, even I began to feel rather forlorn, and that
is saying a good deal.
A few hundred yards beyond the point where we had hit upon this new
trail which was only faintly visible, the horses turned eastward, on to
a field. Between two posts the wire of the fence had been taken down,
and since I could not see any trail leading along the road further
south, I let my horses have their will. I knew the farm on which we
were. It was famous all around for its splendid, pure-bred beef cattle
herd. I had not counted on crossing it, but I knew that after a mile
of this field trail I should emerge on the farmyard, and since I was
particularly well acquainted with the trail from there across the wild
land to Bell’s corner, it suited me to do as my horses suggested. As a
matter of fact this trail became--with the exception of one drive--my
regular route for the rest of the winter. Never again was I to meet with
the slightest mishap on this particular run. But to-day I was to come as
near getting lost as I ever came during the winter, on those drives to
and from the north.
For the next ten minutes I watched the work of the wind on the open
field. As is always the case with me, I was not content with recording
a mere observation. I had watched the thing a hundred times before.
“Observing” means to me as much finding words to express what I see as
it means the seeing itself. Now, when a housewife takes a thin
sheet that is lying on the bed and shakes it up without changing its
horizontal position, the running waves of air caught under the cloth
will throw it into a motion very similar to that which the wind imparts
to the snow-sheets, only that the snow-sheets will run down instead of
up. Under a good head of wind there is a vehemence in this motion
that suggests anger and a violent disposition. The sheets of snow
are “flapped” down. Then suddenly the direction of the wind changes
slightly, and the sheet is no longer flapped down but blown up. At the
line where the two motions join we have that edge the appearance
of which suggested to me the comparison with “exfoliated” rock in
a previous paper. It is for this particular stage in the process of
bringing about that appearance that I tentatively proposed the term
“adfoliation.” “Adfoliated” edges are always to be found on the lee side
of the sheet.
Sometimes, however, the opposite process will bring about nearly the
same result. The snow-sheet has been spread, and a downward sweep of
violent wind will hit the surface, denting it, scraping away an edge
of the top layer, and usually gripping through into lower layers; then,
rebounding, it will lift the whole sheet up again, or any part of it;
and, shattering it into its component crystals, will throw these aloft
and afar to be laid down again further on. This is true “exfoliation.”
Since it takes a more violent burst of wind to effect this true
exfoliation than it does to bring about the adfoliation, and since,
further, the snow once indented, will yield to the depth of several
layers, the true exfoliation edges are usually thicker than the others:
and, of course, they are always to be found on the wind side.
Both kinds of lines are wavy lines because the sheets of wind are
undulating. In this connection I might repeat once more that the
straight line seems to be quite unknown in Nature, as also is uniformity
of motion. I once watched very carefully a ferry cable strung across
the bottom of a mighty river, and, failing to discover any theoretical
reason for its vibratory motion, I was thrown back upon proving to my
own satisfaction that the motion even of that flowing water in the river
was the motion of a pulse; and I still believe that my experiments were
conclusive. Everybody, of course, is familiar with the vibrations of
telephone wires in a breeze. That humming sound which they emit would
indeed be hard to explain without the assumption of a pulsating blow. Of
course, it is easy to prove this pulsation in air. From certain further
observations, which I do not care to speak about at present, I am
inclined to assume a pulsating arrangement, or an alternation of
layers of greater and lesser density in all organised--that is,
crystalline--matter; for instance, in even such an apparently uniform
block as a lump of metallic gold or copper or iron. This arrangement, of
course, may be disturbed by artificial means; but if it is, the matter
seems to be in an unstable condition, as is proved, for instance, by the
sudden, unexpected breaking of apparently perfectly sound steel rails.
There seems to be a condition of matter which so far we have largely
failed to take into account or to utilise in human affairs...
I reached the yard, crossed it, and swung out through the front gate.
Nowhere was anybody to be seen. The yard itself is sheltered by a
curtain of splendid wild trees to the north, the east, and the south. So
I had a breathing spell for a few minutes. I could also clearly see the
gap in this windbreak through which I must reach the open. I think I
mentioned that on the previous drive, going north, I had found the road
four or five miles east of here very good indeed. But the reason had
been that just this windbreak, which angles over to what I have been
calling the twelve-mile bridge, prevented all serious drifting while the
wind came from the north. To-day I was to find things different, for to
the south the land was altogether open. The force of the wind alone was
sufficient to pull the horses back to a walk, before we even had quite
reached the open plain. It was a little after four when I crossed the
gap, and I knew that I should have to make the greater part of what
remained in darkness. I was about twelve miles from town, I should
judge. The horses had not been fed. So, as soon as I saw how things
were, I turned back into the shelter of the bluff to feed. I might have
gone to the farm, but I was afraid it would cost too much time. After
this I always went into town and fed in the stable. While the horses
were eating and resting, I cleaned the cutter of snow looked after my
footwarmer, and, by tramping about and kicking against the tree trunks,
tried to get my benumbed circulation started again. My own lunch on
examination proved to be frozen into one hard, solid lump. So I decided
to go without it and to save it for my supper.
At half past four we crossed the gap in the bluffs for the second time.
Words fail me to describe or even to suggest the fury of the blast and
of the drift into which we emerged. For a moment I thought the top of
the cutter would be blown off. With the twilight that had set in the
wind had increased to a baffling degree. The horses came as near as they
ever came, in any weather, to turning on me and refusing to face the
gale. And what with my blurred vision, the twisting and dodging about of
the horses, and the gathering dusk, I soon did not know any longer where
I was. There was ample opportunity to go wrong. Copses, single trees,
and burnt stumps which dotted the wilderness had a knack of looming up
with startling suddenness in front or on the side, sometimes dangerously
close to the cutter. It was impossible to look straight ahead, because
the ice crystals which mimicked snow cut right into my eyes and made
my lids smart with soreness. Underfoot the rough ground seemed like a
heaving sea. The horses would stumble, and the cutter would pitch over
from one side to the other in the most alarming way. I saw no remedy.
It was useless to try to avoid the obstacles--only once did I do so, and
that time I had to back away from a high stump against which my drawbar
had brought up. The pitching and rolling of the cutter repeatedly shook
me out of my robes, and if, when starting up again from the bluff, I had
felt a trifle more comfortable, that increment of consolation was soon
lost.
We wallowed about--there is only this word to suggest the motion. To all
intents and purposes I was lost. But still there was one thing, provided
it had not changed, to tell me the approximate direction--the wind.
It had been coming from the south-southeast. So, by driving along very
nearly into its teeth, I could, so I thought, not help emerging on the
road to town.
Repeatedly I wished I had taken the old trail. That fearful drift in the
bush beyond the creek, I thought, surely had settled down somewhat in
twenty-four hours. [Footnote: As a matter of fact I was to see it once
more before the winter was over, and I found it settled down to about
one third its original height. This was partly the result of superficial
thawing. But still even then, shortly before the final thaw-up, it
looked formidable enough.] I had had as much or more of unbroken trail
to-day as on the day before. On the whole, though, I still believed that
the four miles across the corner of the marsh south of the creek had
been without a parallel in their demands on the horses’ endurance. And
gradually I came to see that after all the horses probably would have
given out before this, under the cumulative effect of two days of it,
had they not found things somewhat more endurable to-day.
We wallowed along... And then we stopped. I shouted to the
horses--nothing but a shout could have the slightest effect against the
wind. They started to fidget and to dance and to turn this way and that,
but they would not go. I wasted three or four minutes before I shook
free of my robes and jumped out to investigate. Well, we were in the
corner formed by two fences--caught as in a trap. I was dumbfounded.
I did not know of any fence in these parts, of none where I thought
I should be. And how had we got into it? I had not passed through any
gate. There was, of course, no use in conjecturing. If the wind had not
veered around completely, one of the fences must run north-south, the
other one east-west, and we were in the southeast corner of some farm.
Where there was a fence, I was likely to find a farmyard. It could not
be to the east, so there remained three guesses. I turned back to the
west. I skirted the fence closely, so closely that even in the failing
light and in spite of the drifting snow I did not lose sight of it. Soon
the going began to be less rough; the choppy motion of the cutter seemed
to indicate that we were on fall-ploughed land; and not much later Peter
gave a snort. We were apparently nearing a group of buildings. I heard
the heavy thump of galloping horses, and a second later I saw a light
which moved.
I hailed the man; and he came over and answered my questions. Yes, the
wind had turned somewhat; it came nearly from the east now (so that was
what had misled me); I was only half a mile west of my old trail, but
still, for all that, nearly twelve miles from town. In this there was
good news as well as bad. I remembered the place now; just south of the
twelve-mile bridge I had often caught sight of it to the west. Instead
of crossing the wild land along its diagonal, I had, deceived by the
changed direction of the wind, skirted its northern edge, holding
close to the line of poplars. I thought of the fence: yes, the man who
answered my questions was renting from the owner of that pure-bred Angus
herd; he was hauling wood for him and had taken the fence on the west
side down. I had passed between two posts without noticing them. He
showed me the south gate and gave me the general direction. He even
offered my horses water, which they drank eagerly enough. But he did not
offer bed and stable-room for the night; nor did he open the gate
for me, as I had hoped he would. I should have declined the night’s
accommodation, but I should have been grateful for a helping hand at the
gate. I had to get out of my wraps to open it. And meanwhile I had been
getting out and in so often, that I did no longer even care to clean my
feet of snow; I simply pushed the heater aside so as to prevent it from
melting.
I “bundled in”--that word, borrowed from an angry lady, describes my
mood perhaps better than anything else I might say. And yet, though what
followed, was not exactly pleasure, my troubles were over for the day.
The horses, of course, still had a weary, weary time of it, but as soon
as we got back to our old trail--which we presently did--they knew the
road at least. I saw that the very moment we reached it by the way they
turned on to it and stepped out more briskly.
From this point on we had about eleven miles to make, and every step
of it was made at a walk. I cannot, of course say much about the road.
There was nothing for me to do except as best I could to fight the wind.
I got my tarpaulin out from under the seat and spread it over myself. I
verily believe I nodded repeatedly. It did not matter. I knew that the
horses would take me home, and since it was absolutely dark, I could
not have helped it had they lost their way. A few times, thinking that I
noticed an improvement in the road, I tried to speed the horses up; but
when Dan at last, in an attempt to respond, went down on his knees,
I gave it up. Sometimes we pitched and rolled again for a space, but
mostly things went quietly enough. The wind made a curious sound,
something between an infuriated whistle and the sibilant noise a man
makes when he draws his breath in sharply between his teeth.
I do not know how long we may have been going that way. But I remember
how at last suddenly and gradually I realized that there was a change in
our motion. Suddenly, I say--for the realization of the change came as a
surprise; probably I had been nodding, and I started up. Gradually--for
I believe it took me quite an appreciable time before I awoke to the
fact that the horses at last were trotting. It was a weary, slow,
jogging trot--but it electrified me, for I knew at once that we were on
our very last mile. I strained my eye-sight, but I could see no light
ahead. In fact, we were crossing the bridge before I saw the first light
of the town.
The livery stable was deserted. I had to open the doors, to drive in,
to unhitch, to unharness, and to feed the horses myself. And then I went
home to my cold and lonesome house.
It was a cheerless night.